DataGroup IT, a company specialized in the distribution of leading-edge IT products in the African market, said it targets over 50% market share of Storage and data management market in Nigeria and Africa in general within the next three years.

DataGroup IT (DGIT), a leading IT Distributor in Africa specializes in 2 major segments, IT security and Data management has recently signed a Pan African distribution agreement with HITACHI, the world leading manufacturer for storage and data management solutions.

Speaking to Nigeria Communications Week at the Company’s Annual Partners’ Conference held in Lagos Mr. David Dan, vice president, Business Development, DataGroup IT, said that 50% market share is achievable with enterprise solutions products developed by HITACHI Data Solutions (HDS).

 “We are talking about 50% of the market share in this arena. We see HDS as seamless in data management and a major player in this arena. Looking at general IT and data organic growth, storage is something I would say is at the core of IT data management and technology. 

Whether in TELCO, Finance, O&G or Government, businesses and service provided are becoming more and more dependent on their IT to launch more and better services, becoming more agile, secured, and efficient in simple words competitive in the segment they operate in.

A solid secured IT environment will allow enterprises or the people that we serve to better address their market needs/capture more audience, develop their services and to make the organizations successful and profitable.

Further more, said  Dan,” beyond providing our customers with the best of breed Data Management technologies and solution such as HDS and Commvault, DGIT focus in IT Security as one of our major product line. We See IT Security to play a significant role in the Nigerian IT market and actually all over Africa as it allows our customers to keep their most important asset – The DATA, safe, secured and un-touched by hostile parties from inside the organization as well as from the outside. Furthermore compliance and regulations requirements are critical for organization’s business continuity and best practice and IT security is one of the major challenges in order to keep one’s IT environment in line with local and international regulations.

Our IT security Product portfolio is built from no less than 20 world leading IT security manufacturers such as: Check Point, HP ESP, IMPERVA, SAFENET, ENTRUST, CyberArk, FireEye and many more, allowing our customers to fulfill any requirement or address any challenge they face in protecting their IT Environment and their valuable data.

If you are a bank and you are breached, of course, your customers will move to the next bank. We are not talking about theft of money or account overtaking another, we are talking about reputation, reliability, privacy and in one word – Security!

“How can you recover the reputation of a bank that has been breached? Or a TELCO that his “pre-paid” Mobile vouchers are breached and abused by a breach? Even with a zero amount taken, some of your customers’ confidential data stolen, how can you still be called a reliable bank? It is just like someone entering into the safe or vault of a bank in those days.

Commenting on the Company’s focus on West/East Africa, Dan added that, they basically focus on territories that are discovered to possessing an established and developing IT market with growth potentials in terms of services, business needs and IT security challenges.  We focus on territories in which the markets are ready and ripe for IT solutions.

As per today, our main markets are; Nigeria, Ghana, Angola, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Cameron. We have identified that in these countries the drive for IT and the investments are there. Industries like in the financial services, telecos are the leading in those areas”.

While analyzing enterprises solutions business trends in 2013, the Vice President maintained that DataGroup IT has kept faith with IT security solutions for the existing customers.

“We mostly work in the enterprise domain like in financial industry, telecos, government, etc., because we have seen the needs and increased demand for IT security solutions to address different kinds of market trends. As mentioned earlier, some of the trends are compliance oriented or risk management while others are driven by regulation such as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) policy that mandates deployment of solutions for authentication/encryption/PCI DSS, ISO 2xxx and other obligations. So we are helping financial institutions and many other sectors to be in compliance with the requirements and also meet international best practices”.

According to Dan, majority of the incidences happen on daily basis. In most occasions people do not get to know these breaches, because organizations do not want to be observed as organization that has been hacked or alternatively many organizations do not poses yet the right product/solutions to protect themselves and identify the breaches or attempt of breaches.

Over 86% of the breaches will require 3rd party solutions/technologies to identify, protect and remediate the Security breaches and also proper policies and governance capabilities are to be placed in order to keep the organizations secured at all times – Security is one of the most dynamic markets out there and cybercrime is one of the major challenges to address as it literally changes on a daily basis.  In the next 3 years, CYBER CRIME industry will grow word wide to 86B$ which reflects a huge chunk of the IT industry growth engines.

In Summary said Dan “Data Management is a key component for any Organization to run its business and services while IT security challenges are a MUST TO HAVE in order to protect the organization most valuable asset – the DATA and allowing business continuity and risk management at all times. We at DGIT specialize in these two domains and see ourselves as the leading Value Added Distributor in the African market.

Our commitment to our customers and manufacturers is well reflected in our huge install base across Africa and unmatched Product portfolio. We enjoy our partners, customers and manufacturers’ trust and we will keep fulfilling our investment and justify this trust in Nigerian market and all over Africa. We will keep bringing the cutting edge technologies and solutions to our target market and focus on our client’s major need – their BUSINESSS success.