How quickly can your business move to the cloud in an economy defined by rising costs, power instability, and digital-first competitors?
Rehosting, commonly known as lift-and-shift migration, is emerging as the fastest and most practical path to cloud adoption. It enables organisations to modernise quickly without the cost and complexity of rebuilding their entire systems.
According to Xpatweb’s 2025 Critical Skills Survey cited by Lula’s 2026 ICT Sector analysis, 84% of South African organisations struggle to recruit and retain skilled ICT professionals, with cloud architects and data engineers identified as some of the most difficult positions to fill. This skills shortage makes rehosting an attractive option, as it requires significantly less cloud-native expertise than refactoring or rearchitecting. Since the application logic remains unchanged, teams only need to adapt to operating the system within a new infrastructure environment rather than redesigning or rebuilding it entirely.
Digital Humanity’s 2026 cloud advisory analysis notes that South African businesses are increasingly being driven towards cloud adoption by concrete business signals, rising infrastructure maintenance costs, connectivity interruptions, and the growing competitive gap with digital-native entrants, rather than any abstract technology ambition.
Globally, rehosting remains the most common migration approach, accounting for over a third of all cloud migration activity as recently measured in 2025. According to Auvik’s 2026 Cloud Migration Statistics report, rehosting leads migration approaches at 38.3%, while refactor and re-architect strategies, though growing fast at 22.35% annually, remain far behind in actual adoption.
Findings from the Mordor Intelligence’s South Africa ICT Market report indicate that the South Africa ICT Market size was valued at USD 39.82 billion in 2025 and is estimated to grow from USD 42.86 billion in 2026 to reach USD 62.18 billion by 2031, at a CAGR of 7.73% during the forecast period (2026-2031). The analysis draws on publicly available macroeconomic data from Statistics South Africa, ICASA, and National Treasury sources. Cloud services are identified as the fastest-growing segment within the market, outpacing traditional communication services as businesses accelerate workload migration.
Rehosting is becoming increasingly important for businesses because it delivers immediate operational and financial benefits with minimal disruption. In highly competitive, cost-sensitive markets, organisations cannot afford prolonged downtime, costly system rebuilds, or delays in their digital transformation initiatives. Rehosting enables them to move critical workloads to the cloud quickly, improving scalability, reliability, and disaster recovery while reducing dependence on ageing on-premises infrastructure. For SMEs, it also creates a more predictable operating cost model and provides the flexibility needed to respond more quickly to changing market demands and customer expectations.
South Africa’s public cloud market is projected to reach US$6.04 billion in 2025 and grow to nearly R300 billion (US$17.42 billion) by 2030, representing one of the strongest growth trajectories in the MEA region, according to analysis by Business Explainer published in April 2026. The article argues that for small and medium businesses operating in a constrained economy, shifting from capital expenditure to operational expenditure through cloud adoption is as much a financial survival strategy as it is a technology decision.
No single strategy fits every organisation, every application, or every moment.
At Developmenthub, we help organisations identify the most effective migration pathway aligned with their business goals, budgets, and operational realities, from the first lift-and-shift to full cloud-native transformation. Start the conversation today!