Michael Lazarus, Wonga Independent software vendors (ISVs) are a crucial part of the technology ecosystem. Brainstorm and cloud solutions provider Cloud on Demand convened a roundtable in Cape Town to gauge the challenges this segment is facing. Brainstorm: What are the drivers behind moving to cloud? Participants mention scalability and resilience, as well as the advantages of using capex instead of opex. Some also talk about the negligible latency that cloud providers bring, as well as superior performance and cost savings, while others mention security, innovation and uptime. Brainstorm: If you’re an ISV, what is holding you back? Oliver Niemandt, GM, Cloud on Demand, says every business thinks it has unique problems, but, on closer investigation, they find that they all face similar challenges.Hailey Reent, Cloud on Demand Michael Lazarus, CTO, Wonga, says the company has what he calls a “semi-multicloud” strategy. Azure is deeply embedded in its business, he adds, and Wonga also uses one of Cloud on Demand’s competitors in its production environment.What we’re looking for is someone who knows what they’re doing, and can say, ‘With this part, you’re doing it wrong’. We need top-notch deep skills in a partner.Stephen Bethke, Just SA He says his board keeps asking him when some kind of AI solution can be deployed, “but I’m just worried about risk that my own business faces, and I need to put some guardrails in there to make sure it doesn’t break some of the principles that we have”.Fahgrie Otto, Cloud on Demand Neo Mongwaketse, IT service delivery manager, TFG, says an ISV needs to be grilled about what value and investment it’s providing to customers. “How are you making it better for my customer?” He adds that a service provider “will come hard at you”. “Then I think they just want to get the sale and move on. They need to walk with me on my journey.” Stephen Bethke, enterprise architect, Just SA, says it has developed “some pretty serious Azure skills over the last couple of years, but we don’t know everything, not by a long shot. What we’re looking for is someone who knows what they’re doing, and can say, ‘With this part, you’re doing it wrong’. We need top-notch deep skills in a partner.”Once the product is live in your environment, you’re on your own.Thabiso Serake, Pay@ Services Herculaas van Heerden, director, Full Stack, says the technology landscape “is pretty wild right now”. “There are opportunities everywhere. We can see the new world, and we’ve built the ships. We are scaling up so aggressively that we need extra, trusted hands to help us service the boats before we embark. We’re on track, but with scale, we’re running out of runway to deal with breadth [of demand].”Zunaid Mohidin, Exo Catalyst Zunaid Mohidin, CEO, Exo Catalyst, says his company does AI consulting and product development in Southeast Asia. “When I look at an organisation, I want to understand how it’s providing resilience and how it’s going to innovate with me. Is it an AI-first organisation? We’re moving from search to agentic. In the olden days, we used to have data sprawl, but now we’re going to have AI and agentic solutions. How can compute and storage be balanced?” He adds that if he sees a spike in one of his applications, his partner needs to trigger an alert before he gets the bill, not afterwards.They will always give you the highest spec. It will be overkill, and it will be overkill on your pocket. You’ll be paying for that machine,