Western Digital’s Ghassan Azzi addressing journalists at Montecasino.

US-based computer hard disk drive manufacturer and data storage company Western Digital is shipping new data storage solutions to Africa, starting with SA.

A senior company executive said the continent needs to explore new data storage technologies and architecture to cater for its youthful population.

At a roundtable discussion in Johannesburg yesterday, Western Digital outlined its plans for 2020, with senior regional manager for Africa Ghassan Azzi saying the company has employed new innovations in its line-up of storage solutions built for consumer use.

“At the recently held CES event earlier this month, we showcased a couple of innovative product solutions, some of which will be making their way to Johannesburg.

“The more people are connected, the more they use data. Right now, our concern is not about competition but to bring data solutions that would address South African and entire African continent needs,” Azzi said.

The company competes against Seagate, Toshiba, Intel, Samsung and Hitachi, among others.

One of the products Azzi spoke about was the pocket-sized SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps portable SSD, which he said was inspired by consumers’ desire to capture rich content and keep it with them.

He said Western Digital continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible with an 8TB SSD prototype.

According to Azzi, the new solutions will be coming to South Africa and more products will be made available in Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya during the course of the year.

Azzi explained that South Africa had been identified as the first target because it is the most advanced economy on the continent, with a huge demand for mobile data storage solutions.

According to Azzi, Western Digital’s new product solutions create an environment for data to grow.

“Everywhere data lives, from advanced data centres to mobile sensors to personal devices, our solutions deliver the possibilities of data.”

He noted the world needs new data storage technologies and architectures as the scale of data continues to increase, as does the diversity of application workloads.

Citing 5G technology for digital mobile networks, he said user-friendly, capable and reliable solutions are required.

“Some applications require a means to easily manipulate vast amounts of data (big data). In the first scenario, performance is key. In the second, capacity is critical.”