Africa's mobile landscape presents a unique opportunity for organisations to leapfrog other nations when managing their data, according to South Africa-based data management firm Redstor.

The company says unstructured data, (that which is sourced from multiple tech devices) is growing exponentially globally and managing this growth is an increasing challenge.

"Buying primary storage is expensive and managing and scaling it is often difficult and can be unsustainable. Securely managing data through its lifecycle can present many problems, especially for organisations that are required to retain rarely accessed data, stretching capacity on primary storage systems," The company states.

Redstor's UK-based co-founder and CEO Paul Evans told ITWeb Africa that African companies have the potential to leapfrog other nations because of the continent's mobile landscape. This is because data on mobile devices is stored primarily in the cloud, making it easily accessible and cheaper to manage.

Danie Marais, Director of Product Management at Redstor added, "When you have a mobile force or people that use their phones and tablets, typically that data is stored somewhere in the cloud because that what makes it so accessible from any device that's connected."

Bot execs agreed that cloud eases data management and this is helping to drive the uptake of cloud solutions.

Colin Timmis, South Africa Head of Accounting for New Zealand-based software company Xero, told ITWeb Africa earlier this year that cloud adoption on the continent is generally on the rise - albeit slowly, and mobile devices are Africa's gateway to cloud adoption, owing to a massive mobile penetration.

According to Marais, "Lots of the companies in SA are moving to hybrid cloud and to cloud, most of them have started with a tape backup environment and they want to move that data somewhere else, maybe offsite."

Adebayo Sanni, MD at Oracle Nigeria, said Nigeria's SME-dominant market is poised to overtake Kenya and South Africa in terms of cloud adoption in 2018.

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Marais urged companies in Africa to adopt more up to date data management solutions. "Data is extremely valuable, we've seen companies that lose their data and the business doesn't survive, it's very important that African companies must look after their data because it's the lifeblood of the company."

Evans added, "There's the old way of doing things and there's the new way of doing things, and the old way was having really complicated software, really complicated pricing and a really complicated renewal. The smart way is to adopt an easy/ simple way with an effective price, across different sites. The new way is about streaming data on demand."

The firm spoke to ITWeb Africa prior to the introduction of the Redstor Pro Archiving solution, scheduled for official launch on 1 March 2018.

Kenya, Mozambique and Nigeria have been identified as key markets, but the plan is to establish reseller partnerships to distribute the solution across the continent.