What is cloud computing in simple words?

Cloud computing is using computers, storage and software that a provider runs in its data centres, reached over the internet, instead of owning them yourself. You rent what you need, scale it up or down in minutes and pay for what you use or by subscription. Email in Microsoft 365 or Gmail and files in OneDrive or Google Drive are everyday examples.

What are the three types of cloud computing?

The three types of cloud computing are public, private and hybrid cloud. Public cloud is shared infrastructure rented from providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud; private cloud is dedicated to one organisation, on premises or in colocation; hybrid connects the two and runs them as one. Community cloud and multi-cloud are sometimes added as further models.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of cloud hosting?

The advantages of cloud hosting are capacity that scales with demand, paying for use, resilience against local power and hardware failures, and access from anywhere. The disadvantages are dependence on connectivity, bills that grow without controls, US-dollar pricing, misconfiguration risk and lock-in. Each disadvantage can be managed with a backup line, budgets and alerts, a security baseline and an exit plan.

What is the best cloud storage for business documents?

For most organisations the best cloud storage for business documents is the one bundled with their productivity suite: OneDrive and SharePoint with Microsoft 365, or Google Drive with Google Workspace. Both give administrators central control of accounts, sharing and retention, with audit logs of who opened and shared what. Add a separate backup, because sync services copy deletions and ransomware damage too.

What is the cheapest cloud storage per terabyte?

Archive-tier object storage on AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud usually has the lowest price per terabyte, but it charges to retrieve data, can be slow to return it and adds egress fees. For everyday documents, storage already included in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace is often cheaper in practice. Compare the total bill, including retrieval, egress and exchange-rate movement, not the headline rate.

Is cloud computing cheaper than owning servers?

Cloud computing is usually cheaper for variable workloads, new applications and organisations without a suitable server room, while steady, heavy workloads can cost less on owned or colocated hardware. A fair comparison counts the hardware's full working life, power, UPS, cooling, space, licences and staff time against the cloud bill, egress and exchange rate. We model both before recommending either.

Cloud computing explained for South African organisations

Last reviewed: September 2026

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing power, storage, databases, networking and software over the internet from a provider's data centres, paid for by use or by subscription. This guide explains how it works, its types, benefits, risks and costs in South Africa. Arke Technologies designs, migrates and manages cloud services from Johannesburg.

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Cloud computing explained for South African organisations

Last reviewed: September 2026, 17 min read

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What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing means renting IT resources (servers, storage, databases, networks and applications) from a provider that runs them in its own data centres, instead of buying and housing them yourself. You reach them over the internet or a private link, start and stop them in minutes, and pay for what you use or by subscription.

The standard definition, from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), names five characteristics that separate cloud computing from ordinary hosting:

On-demand self-service. You provision a server or storage yourself, through a web console or an API, without waiting for the provider.
Broad network access. Services are reached over the network from laptops, phones and other systems.
Resource pooling. The provider serves many customers from shared pools of hardware, divided by virtualisation.
Rapid elasticity. Capacity grows and shrinks with demand, for a month-end run or an exam season.
Measured service. Use is metered and billed, so cost follows consumption.

Most people already use cloud computing daily: email in Microsoft 365 or Gmail, files in OneDrive or Google Drive, calls in Teams or Meet. For an organisation, the questions are who designs it, who secures it and how it is paid for.

An engineer with a staff lanyard works on a laptop in soft window light.

How cloud computing works

A cloud provider builds data centres in groups called regions, each made up of separate facilities, often called availability zones, with their own power, cooling and network. Software called a hypervisor divides each physical server into many virtual machines, and storage and networks are pooled the same way. When you ask for a server, the platform finds the capacity, starts it and begins metering.

Responsibility is shared. The provider secures the buildings, hardware and platform; the customer stays responsible for identities, configuration, data and who can see it. Many cloud security incidents happen on the customer's side of that line: a storage bucket left open to the public, or an administrator account without multi-factor authentication. Knowing where the line falls for each service is the first step in cloud security; our guide to what cyber security is covers the controls.

Cloud computing services: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS

What are cloud computing services? They are the things you rent, grouped by how much of the technology stack the provider runs for you. These terms appear in most ICT tenders and architecture documents.

Service model	What you rent	What the provider runs	Examples
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)	Virtual servers, storage and networks	Data centres, hardware and virtualisation	Virtual machines on AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud
Platform as a service (PaaS)	A platform to run code or databases	Everything up to the runtime and database engine	Managed databases such as Cloud SQL and Azure SQL; application platforms such as Cloud Run
Software as a service (SaaS)	A finished application	The whole application	Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, cloud accounting
Serverless functions	Code that runs when an event occurs	Everything, including scaling to zero	AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Run functions

Cloud-native services are built for this model from the start: small services in containers, managed databases and functions that scale on their own, rather than a traditional server copied to the cloud unchanged. A cloud PBX system is SaaS applied to telephony: the phone system runs in a data centre and staff use desk phones, softphones or Teams, as our guide to VoIP for business explains. For how we design and run each model, see our cloud services.

Public, private, hybrid and community cloud

The three types of cloud computing, public, private and hybrid, describe where the infrastructure lives and who shares it. Community cloud and multi-cloud complete the picture.

Deployment model	What it is	Suits	Watch for
Public cloud	Shared hyperscale platforms: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud	Variable demand, new applications, organisations without a server room	Consumption costs, egress fees, configuration discipline
Private cloud	Cloud-style infrastructure dedicated to one organisation, on premises or in a colocation data centre, on VMware, Hyper-V or Proxmox	Steady workloads, sensitive data, systems that cannot move	You carry the hardware, power and refresh cycle
Hybrid cloud	Private infrastructure and public cloud connected and run as one	Mid-sized and large organisations with systems that must stay on site	Two environments to secure, and the links between them
Community cloud	Infrastructure shared by organisations with common requirements, such as public bodies in one sector	Sectors with shared compliance rules	Governance of a shared platform
Multi-cloud	Two or more public clouds, each used for the workloads it suits	Organisations choosing the best service per job	More skills, tools and bills to manage

A virtual private cloud (VPC) is an isolated network you define inside a public cloud: public infrastructure with private addressing and your own firewall rules. Hybrid multi-cloud combines on-premises infrastructure with more than one public cloud under one set of identity, security and cost controls.

On premise vs cloud vs hybrid is rarely an all-or-nothing choice. On premises, you own and run everything; in the cloud, you rent it; hybrid keeps on site what must stay close, such as a plant control system or a large design file store, and moves the rest. For most organisations with a server room, hybrid is the realistic destination, not a halfway house. Equipment that stays can move out of the office into colocation (see data centres in South Africa) or onto a private cloud we design and run.

Cloud storage explained

Cloud storage keeps files and data on a provider's servers instead of on a local disk or file server, reached over the internet and copied across several drives or facilities. What cloud storage an organisation needs depends on what it stores:

Type	What it holds	Cloud storage services examples
File sync and share	Documents and folders, synced to laptops and shared with colleagues	OneDrive and SharePoint, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box
Object storage	Backups, archives, media and application data, billed per gigabyte	Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage
Server disks and file shares	Storage attached to cloud servers	Azure Files, Amazon EBS and EFS, Google Filestore
Cloud backup	Separate copies of live data, with version history and retention	Backup services for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and servers

Cloud based storage services for organisations differ from consumer storage above all in control: an administrator owns the accounts, sets sharing rules, recovers files when someone leaves and keeps an audit trail. Work files in personal accounts leave with the individual, a POPIA risk and a continuity problem.

One point matters more than any other: sync is not backup. OneDrive and Google Drive copy every change, including an accidental deletion or files encrypted by ransomware, to every device. Keep a separate backup with version history, as set out in backup and disaster recovery.

The best cloud-based storage, and the cheapest cloud storage

The best cloud based storage for an organisation is often the storage it already pays for. Microsoft 365 business plans include 1 TB of OneDrive storage per user, and Google Workspace pools storage across the organisation: 30 GB per user on Business Starter, 2 TB on Business Standard and 5 TB on Business Plus (Microsoft and Google, September 2026). Check what your licences include before buying more; our Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace guide compares the two.

To find the best cloud data storage beyond that, or the best cloud storage for documents, judge each option on:

Where the data lives. A South African region keeps POPIA transfer questions simple.
Administration and audit. Central control of accounts, sharing and retention.
Security. Multi-factor authentication, encryption at rest and in transit, and data-loss prevention for personal information.
Recovery. Version history, retention policies and a separate backup.
Total cost. The whole bill, not only the price per terabyte.

The cheapest cloud storage per TB is usually archive-tier object storage, but the headline price hides other charges: retrieval fees and slow returns on archive tiers, egress fees to move data out, and dollar-based pricing that moves with the exchange rate. The best and cheapest cloud storage for documents people use daily is usually the allowance bundled with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace; for backups and archives, it is object storage in the right tier.

Benefits of cloud services

The benefits of cloud services come from renting capacity instead of owning it. These are the cloud services advantages that matter most to South African organisations:

Pay for use, not for peaks
No server bought for the busiest week of the year; spending moves from capital to operating budgets.
Scale in minutes
Add capacity for a month-end run, a results release or a tender deadline, then release it.
Resilience against load-shedding and local failures
Workloads run in facilities with their own power, cooling and redundancy, not a server room on a UPS.
Work from anywhere
Head office, branches, schools and field teams reach the same systems from any connected site.
Faster delivery
A new environment takes minutes to create, not a hardware procurement cycle.
Security tooling at scale
Providers patch the platform and offer controls that are hard to match in a small server room, once they are switched on and configured.
Disaster recovery without a second building
Backups and standby systems sit in another zone or region.

Cloud hosting benefits apply the same logic to websites and web applications. The cloud hosting advantages over a single physical server are capacity that grows with traffic, managed backups, a South African region close to your users and no hardware to replace when a disk fails; see website and email hosting.

Disadvantages of cloud services, and how to manage them

The disadvantages of cloud hosting and cloud services are real, and each can be managed.

Risk	What goes wrong	How we manage it
Connectivity	No internet, no access to cloud systems	Business fibre with a backup line, sized for the traffic
Cost growth	Consumption bills, forgotten resources and egress fees rise quietly; US-dollar pricing adds currency risk	Budgets, alerts, tagging to cost centres and a monthly cost review
Misconfiguration	Public storage, weak administrator accounts, open ports	A security baseline from day one: multi-factor authentication, least-privilege access, logging and regular configuration reviews
Data residency	Personal information held abroad without meeting POPIA section 72	South African regions by default, and a record of where every copy is held
Lock-in	Services that make leaving expensive	Standard formats, documented architecture and an exit plan agreed at the start
Provider outages	A zone, region or service fails	Designs that span zones, backups in a second region, and tested recovery
Skills	Teams trained on servers, not cloud platforms	Training, documentation and managed support under an SLA

Cost surprises many organisations, so cloud cost optimisation is a standing part of how we run cloud environments, not a one-off clean-up.

Cloud computing in South Africa

All three large providers run cloud regions in South Africa: Microsoft Azure in Johannesburg, with Cape Town as its paired region; AWS in Cape Town; and Google Cloud in Johannesburg. Local regions cut latency for South African users and keep data in the country. Five local realities shape every design:

Load-shedding. A cloud region removes the dependence on the office UPS and generator, but the office still needs power for its network and connection.
Connectivity. Fibre is the foundation and a second line is the fallback. Our connectivity division, Fibre Boyz, has connected homes and businesses since 2017, and its business fibre and fixed LTE can sit under the same support contract; see business connectivity.
Currency. Cloud prices are largely set in US dollars, and rand-billed services are repriced as the exchange rate moves, so budgets need room for currency movement.
POPIA. Section 19 requires appropriate, reasonable technical and organisational measures to secure personal information, and section 72 places conditions on sending it outside South Africa; see POPIA compliance.
Public sector. Departments, municipalities and public entities also work within the PFMA or MFMA and the National Policy on Data and Cloud published by the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies in 2024. Our guide to PFMA, MFMA and ICT procurement explains how those rules shape a cloud purchase.

What cloud computing costs

Cloud computing is priced in three ways: pay-as-you-go for servers, storage and databases; commitments (reserved instances, savings plans or committed-use discounts) that lower the rate in return for a one- or three-year term; and per-user subscriptions for software such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. The monthly bill is driven by compute (the size of each server and the hours it runs), storage volume and tier, data transferred out (egress), software licences such as Windows Server and SQL Server, backup, support plans and the exchange rate.

The cloud bill is not the whole cost: the migration project, months of running old and new systems side by side, training and ongoing management belong in the business case too. A fair comparison with owning servers covers the hardware's full working life, including power, UPS, cooling, space and staff time. Steady workloads sometimes cost less on owned or colocated hardware; variable ones usually cost less in the cloud.

For market context, published hourly rates for IT project work in South Africa run from about R550 to R750 ex VAT, and published managed IT rates run from about R180 to R400 per user per month (both matnet.co.za, September 2026). We quote a migration per project after an assessment, show the monthly run cost on each candidate platform before you commit, and manage the environment afterwards under an SLA. For the running side, see managed IT services cost in South Africa.

How to move to the cloud: a practical sequence

A cloud migration strategy is the plan that decides what moves, where, in which order and how you would reverse it. In practice it follows eight steps:

Inventory
List every system, data set, user group and dependency, including the undocumented ones.
Classify the data
Mark personal information, financial records and anything under retention rules, and decide where each may live.
Choose a destination per workload
Replace with SaaS, move to a managed platform, lift to a virtual server, keep on private infrastructure or retire.
Choose the platform
Existing licences and skills weigh most: Microsoft 365 estates often find Azure the easiest fit, Google-based ones Google Cloud.
Fix connectivity first
Size the primary line for the new traffic and add a backup before anything critical moves.
Set the baseline
Multi-factor authentication, least-privilege access, logging, budgets and tagging, before the first workload lands.
Migrate in waves
Start with low-risk workloads, test each cut-over and keep a way back until the result is validated.
Run and review
Monthly cost, security and service reports, with changes approved through change control.

Our cloud migration service runs this sequence on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

How Arke Technologies delivers cloud

Platforms. AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud; private cloud on VMware, Hyper-V and Proxmox; and client equipment placed and managed in South African colocation data centres. We also run our own servers in Johannesburg.
Governance and reporting. An SLA in which incidents are prioritised on a P1 to P4 scale, with response and resolution targets agreed to your business impact, a monthly service review with cost and security reporting, and change control.
Compliance. POPIA controls designed in, King IV Principle 12 reporting for boards, controls aligned with ISO/IEC 27001 and the CIS Controls, and audit-ready documentation for public bodies working under the PFMA or MFMA.
Procurement fit. Arke Technologies (Pty) Ltd is a Level 1 B-BBEE contributor (sworn affidavit available on request). Company documents, our CSD supplier number and SARS tax compliance status are available on request, and we work from a proposal, SLA, purchase order or tender response.
Continuity. You own your data, credentials and documentation, and an exit plan is agreed at the start, so the environment can move in-house or to another provider without a rebuild.
Hardware. We size servers and storage for the private side and supply them through Server Hub, our hardware division.

More guides are in our insights library.

Last reviewed: September 2026, 17 min read

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Frequently asked questions

Is cloud storage safe for personal information under POPIA?

Cloud storage can meet POPIA when it is configured properly: multi-factor authentication, least-privilege access, encryption, logging and a record of where each copy is held. POPIA section 19 requires reasonable security measures, and section 72 sets conditions for sending personal information outside South Africa, which a South African region keeps simple. The weak point is usually configuration, not the provider.

What is cloud computing?

How cloud computing works

Cloud computing services: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS

Public, private, hybrid and community cloud

Cloud storage explained

The best cloud-based storage, and the cheapest cloud storage

Benefits of cloud services

Pay for use, not for peaks

Scale in minutes

Resilience against load-shedding and local failures

Work from anywhere

Faster delivery

Security tooling at scale

Disaster recovery without a second building

Disadvantages of cloud services, and how to manage them

Cloud computing in South Africa

What cloud computing costs

How to move to the cloud: a practical sequence

Inventory

Classify the data

Choose a destination per workload

Choose the platform

Fix connectivity first

Set the baseline

Migrate in waves

Run and review