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Western Digital strengthens its SA presence as data habits evolve

7th June 2019

By: Natasha Odendaal

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

     

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Data technology giant Western Digital is reaffirming its presence in South Africa with a more diversified portfolio of data storage devices.

This gives local consumers access to a wider range of the company’s WD- and SanDisk-brand products.

“The amount of data that people generate is growing exponentially year-on-year, highlighting a shift in storage habits that is currently under way – not just globally, but also locally,” says Western Digital senior sales manager for Africa Ghassan Azzi.

The breadth and depth of Big Data is driving the universal need for higher capaci- ties across a broad spectrum of applications and workloads and, with consumer use trends evermore diverse, the challenge lies in how these capabilities are unlocked and implemented.

Western Digital, as the largest data storage specialist worldwide, believes it can deliver the capacity to conquer the data explosion.

“[A total of] 55% of global data is stored on our [range of] products,” says Azzi.

In the past five years, the amount of data being generated, transferred and stored is “already massive” and is expected to reach 850 ZB by 2021, fuelled by the memory requirements for the rapid growth of content creation and consumption, which is, in turn, driven by smartphone growth.

Every connected business, mobile device or user requires storage.

“We believe the South African market is key to our future growth and success.”

In South Africa, with a population of nearly 58-million, there are 98-million mobile subscriptions, 31-million Internet users and 23-million active social media users.

The most active social media and Voice- over-Internet Protocol platforms are WhatsApp (90%), YouTube (84%), Facebook (82%), Facebook Messenger (57%) and Instagram (54%).

He explains that, globally, every minute of every day, 400 hours of videos are uploaded on Youtube, three-million pieces of content are shared on Facebook, 3.8-million photos and videos are shared on WhatsApp, 46 740 photos are posted on Instagram, 527 760 photos are shared on Snapchat, 75 000 user posts are published on Tumblr and 3 472 Spotify playlists are created or edited.

In a presentation to the media, he reveals that an estimated 1.2-trillion digital photos a year are taken worldwide – 85% on smartphones – and over 30-million selfies are taken daily. Global application downloads reached over 175-billion in 2017.

“Today and in the future, storage has to meet various types of use cases, workloads and environments and is becoming an integral part of the design of any network, data base or application,” he says.

Further, fifth-generation (5G) brings a new level of network abilities and data transfer rates that set the stage for many desired rich media and real-time applications.

“In the past, general-purpose storage capabilities greatly exceeded any network, data or application requirements; however, with enhancements and the insurgence of end points, edge computing and cloud capabilities, general-purpose storage no longer cuts it.

“Without clearly defining storage from the end point, through edge and cloud looking at both user and application needs, 5G and future environments will not rise to their full potential,” the company points out.

In 2018 and beyond, extracting the value of data will become an even greater necessity to most organisations – a shift that will drive companies to capture and preserve more of the data they generate in order to transform it to find value.

Storing data, however, is not just about unlimited space, but also about security.

“Western Digital offers secure, high-performance, high-capacity and high-quality storage solutions cater for the growing needs and lifestyles of consumers in South Africa,” Azzi assures.

Western Digital’s product line includes the SanDisk-mobile storage solutions port- folio, with storage devices such as the iXpand flash drive, SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive m3.0, and microSD and SD cards, such as SanDisk Extreme and SanDisk Extreme Pro.

The company also produces SanDisk external SSDs, such as the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD, and a wide range of WD external and internal SSDs, besides others.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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