ContinuitySA, Africa's leading provider of business continuity and resilience solutions, is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its business in Mozambique. The company's Mozambiquan journey began with a small work area recovery facility and data centre at Matola, just south of Maputo, in 2008.

"Like so many South Africa-based companies, we initially came to Mozambique in tandem with an existing client of ours, a large bank," says Willem Olivier, GM: Africa, ContinuitySA. "We then bought the property and expanded it over time. As our client portfolio has grown and new technology has become available, we have broadened our portfolio of services to include replication and high availability in addition to offsite backup. We currently count some of Mozambique's leading financial and petrochemical companies among our clients."

Mr Olivier says that connectivity remains one of the main challenges to serving clients in Mozambique, but that ContinuitySA's merger with Internet Solutions, a leading African IP communications company, has proved to be a huge help.

"Gradually improving communications links in the country, and specifically our access to Internet Solutions' backbone, is critical to our ability to offer cutting-edge solutions like replication," he comments.

Like all businesses in the country, frequent power outages also present a major challenge for a company that offers business continuity solutions. Consequently, ContinuitySA has invested in dual generators and uninterruptible power supplies for its data centre.

Another milestone was the appointment of a Mozambiquan national, Augusto Cossa our Country Manager to head up the local operation. "Mr Cossa is playing a vital role in helping to build awareness of the value that business resilience offers in building a strong, globally competitive economy," he says. "The availability of skills is another issue, and we are consciously growing the local base of relevant skills and are proud that we now only employ Mozambiquan nationals in our office.

Looking to the future, Mr Olivier says that ContinuitySA is planning for growth as Mozambiquan businesses and government departments become more conversant with the value of developing a business resilience strategy. He points out that any companies delivering services to the financial services industry will increasingly find themselves required to prove they have adequate resilience and disaster recovery capabilities in place.

On the cards is a new facility making use of modern electrical reticulation and fixtures to use power more efficiently and admit more natural light. ContinuitySA also plans to expand its advisory services to offer clients specialised business continuity and resilience services in Portuguese as well as English.

"No other African business continuity provider comes to matching our integrated portfolio of services backed up by over 30 years of experience and a global reputation," Mr Olivier concludes. "I believe we offer companies and state entities in Mozambique a real opportunity to differentiate themselves in the race to build a strong business sector able to compete globally."