Chinese ICT and telecommunications firm has launched IT Flash Storm to the South African market, a campaign centred around the rollout of SSD product at the same price point as current 15000 RPM hard disk drive storage infrastructure. The move signals Huawei's aggressive push to gain on competitors within the growing global storage market.

The tech firm, which owns R&D and manufacturing plants to produce its own storage solutions, unveiled its product line at an event in Johannesburg today.

David Chen, Director of Eastern and Southern Africa Data Centre Sales at Huawei, reaffirmed the company's strategy to help businesses in their digital transformation and the need to adapt data centre speeds and storage capacities.

Specifically, IT Flash Storm is targeted at firms that are looking to leverage opportunities within the so-called third wave or third platform, defined by BYOD, IoT and the exponential growth of data.

At the heart of this transition is the global shift in storage solutions, from 15 000 RPM spinning disks to SSD and increasingly in flash.

According IDC research into the storage market, from a South African point of view, CIOs are focusing on increasing capacity, particularly to help manage this capacity to better control content serving, a key area of interest.

Mark Walker, Associate Vice President, Sub-Saharan Africa at IDC, said while CIOs generally understand the benefits of flash storage, the capacity vs cost debate still dominates discussion when it comes to storage technology investment and allocation.

While South Africa is described as a mature market, with high growth rates all but gone, businesses are still operating within a turbulent economic climate.

Amid trying economic conditions locally, Walker said the allocation of storage capacity is mostly transactional and the general mindset among decision makers is to avoid keeping 'crown jewels' outside of the 'house' and invest more readily in inhouse data centres.

In terms of the Africa market more businesses are looking to optimise their infrastructure and view their ICT capacity as cost centres in the business.

Huawei believes IT Flash Storm is a cost effective alternative to what is available and will empower businesses in emerging markets with an improved ability to control the exponential growth of data.