Infinidat, a leading provider of enterprise-class storage solutions, is gaining momentum in the South African market with a number of innovative developments launched in the last six months. These include its storage-as-a-service (STaaS) strategy via AIOps technology and flexible consumption models at petabyte scale, as well as the recent introduction of a new InfiniBox Solid-State Array (SSA) offering and enhanced data protection against ransomware through its InfiniGuard CyberRecovery capabilities. Through these advanced intelligent solutions, Infinidat is assisting to empower local businesses as they grapple with the complexity of the storage and protection of data whilst balancing budget constraints.
“Businesses cannot afford for their infrastructure to hold them back in today’s digital world, and they need high performance storage that is able to scale as you grow. However, South Africa is also a highly price-sensitive market, so cost-effective solutions are essential and often the cloud is not viable. Infinidat delivers an on-premise private cloud with its InfiniBox storage solution that delivers a public cloud experience, and features an elastic pricing model that encompasses both OpEx and CapEx.”
“To explain further, businesses can purchase a single data storage solution and pay for a portion of the capacity, known as ‘base’ capacity, using CapEx. Yet when they require a ‘burst’ of additional capacity, they can self-provision and pay for what they use with the OpEx model. In addition, customers who change their mind can switch between the two as and when they need. For example, if the business requires more ‘base’ capacity, they can simply add more as part of their CapEx, resulting in a predictable monthly expense,” says Hayden Sadler, Country Manager for South Africa at Infinidat.
However, one common thread is that local enterprises do not necessarily have the skills required to effectively manage storage.
STaaS is the solution. With our InfiniBox FLX, businesses have storage capacity available ‘as-you-go’ through a subscription model, featuring centralised operations, improved cost management and scalability at petabyte scale, to help businesses simplify their IT operations. Importantly, the subscription includes all hardware, software licenses, warranties, monitoring and support, reducing the requirement for in-house specialised skills and resources. This is ideal for South African businesses as according to the ICT Sector Survey 2021 report, compiled by the Black IT Forum, of twenty-five skills in shortage within the ICT Sector in South Africa, Data Management Manager is one of the top three skills that are scarce.
At the same time, Infinidat offers 100% guaranteed availability and mission-critical performance at the lowest possible total cost of ownership.
Recently, Infinidat extended its platform to include InfiniBox SSA, further increasing its performance and availability advantages for the most demanding applications.
Another challenge facing South African businesses, and one that has been exacerbated by the global pandemic, is the need to protect against cyberattacks like ransomware. According to Kaspersky, South Africa ranks third in the world for the highest number of users experiencing targeted ransomware attacks. The InfiniGuard appliance has been significantly enhanced with new CyberRecovery capabilities, to provide best-in-class transparent protection of the entire backup environment and the world’s fastest data recovery capabilities.
“The Neural Cache lies at the heart of Infinidat’s offerings, with deep learning capabilities and built-in intelligence to dynamically optimise infrastructure and application environments. Not only does this deliver a zero-touch, set-it-and-forget-it experience, it also helps to improve performance within InfiniBox and offers enhanced ransomware and cyberthreat protection within InfiniGuard,” says Sadler.
The success of Infindat’s approach is evident. In January this year, the company surpassed seven exabytes of enterprise storage deployed globally, and in May, was recognised by the Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Primary Storage Arrays. Closer to home, Infinidat has secured top clients across financial services, telecommunications, and ICT. Some notable names include Clientele Life, Vox Telecom and Silicon Sky, and Senwes.
“While our product and solution innovations are what set us apart from our competition, we would not be where we are today without our channel partners. To demonstrate our commitment, we have developed the new Infinidat Accreditation Program, which has been designed to help partners win new deals and drive business growth, with expanded online training to ensure our channel partners stay ahead of the game, even in turbulent times such as these,” Sadler concludes.