PODCAST | Digital storage is big business in Africa

The growth of digital storage is the focus in this edition of the Business Day Spotlight. 

Our host Mudiwa Gavaza is joined by Ghassan Azzi, Western Digital sales director for Africa. 

All information produced on computers, smartphones, tablets needs to be stored somewhere. This is what Western Digital specialises in.

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Valued at $15.2bn (about R260bn), Western Digital is one of the world’s largest hard disk drive manufacturers and data storage companies, headquartered in San Jose, California. 

Companies like Western Digital have benefited from the growth in data generation around the world in an increasingly digital world.

Azzi details the size and scope of the company’s operations in the region, highlighting some of the major centres. SA stands as one of the company’s main regional hubs. 

In addition to the WD brand of storage devices, the company owns the SanDisk brand, which mainly sells USB flash drives and SD cards. Azzi says continued growth in smartphone sales has been good for Western Digital’s prospects as consumers tend to buy additional storage for such devices. 

Azzi explains that part of the company’s strategy on the consumer side is making sure that their storage devices are usually sold alongside those devices on which their technology is typically used.

Western Digital also sells storage to enterprise clients for large-scale projects like data centres.

Topics of discussion include: Western Digital business in SA; the company’s intentions in the market; what its 2022/2023 strategy for Africa entails; an operational update; and insight into metrics around the size and scope of the company’s operations. 

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Business Day Spotlight is a MultimediaLIVE production.