Tech Talk on Business Tech Africa – With ICT Award Winner, Braintree

BrainTree, a leading Microsoft solutions partner, was recently awarded the Intelligent Transformation Vendor of 2025 Award at the ICT Awards, and we spoke with Chris Badenhorst, VP of Azure and AI at Braintree, about the award and what it looks like to create successful Cloud and AI developments for ERP systems.

Key Quotes from Chris:

On Winning the Award

“Standing on that stage, I’ve never been more proud of my team and the company I work for, Braintree, standing on that stage and accepting that award. It was really, really, really an accomplishment of note for us”.

What a successful Cloud and AI integration Looks Like:

“And more importantly for us, I mentioned this is, understanding customer strategy is critical for us in applying the right technologies behind that business strategy…..Are we taking that strategic perspective and outcome from the customer and aligning the right technologies behind that strategy, rather than just throwing the technology (at the business requirement), and then looking at the strategy, and we’ve just found that that is actually the key to proper intelligent digital transformation”.

“It takes longer, but it takes understanding and insight. And once you have that insight, it’s where you can really, really apply the right AI or the right data models or the right virtual machines or infrastructure aligned to that”.

Cost – The Major Driver of AI and Cloud Adoption

“I can tell you this, cost governance and AI at this point in time, and innovation, doing more with less, is probably the top three drivers at the moment we’re getting from customers in the market”. “But cost governance is number one”.