Backup, virtualisation, and disaster recovery solutions are becoming easier to sell in Africa and this is encouraging further investment according to Veeam Software. The company has revealed plans for further expansion across the continent buoyed by its performance over the past few months.

Claude Schuck, who joined Veeam as regional manager for Africa nearly a year ago, says a large part of the company's recalibrated Africa strategy will focus on East Africa.

"We have made a statement by investing in premises in South Africa because bricks and mortar are always important as it shows commitment from a company. Over the past year, we've spent time trying to grow the company and find ways to cement our presence in the rest of Africa. We would like to have a more solid representation in East Africa. We are also hiring more people in sales and presales because of a growing workload across the continent and we are going into different countries and training and upskilling our partners - usually three or four per country - so that they can represent us even better."

Schuck says Veeam has experienced greater uptake of its services in Africa as more businesses here are starting to appreciate the true cost of downtime and its impact on jobs and the viability of their businesses.

"One thing we have realised is that every business is a software business in today's world. It is not a scare tactic to emphasise the challenge of downtime, but it is important to consider the reputational damage to your brand after being off for a couple of days, to think about whether your staff or customers remain with you during that time. There is a cost to being down. We find that large and small organisations are starting to listen and understand the value of always being up and being able to trade. In Sub-Saharan Africa, we had about thirty percent growth year-on-year, although there was a lot less growth in South Africa because we are a lot more established here. In countries like Namibia, we managed more than 100% growth. In Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe we are finding north of 50% and that speaks to a maturity of the market because in the past backup and recovery was a grudge purchase."

Schuck adds that Veeam is finding ways to improve its product offering in Africa by giving businesses the opportunity to draw insights and enhance productivity by using information that they have backed up.

While the company continues to partner with distributors across the continent, Schuck says the intention is to expand into new territories including Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia.