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 ‘With right technology, Nigeria can overcome security challenges’

By ADEYEMI ADEPETUN
22 April 2015   |   8:46 am
What is Western Digital’s interest in the recent security conference in Nigeria? Western Digital is a pioneer leader in hard disc drive storage facilities in the world.
WD

Mohammed Owais

Director, Sales and Distribution, Middle East and Africa, Western Digital, Mohammed Owais, was in Nigeria recently, and attended SECUREX West Africa security exhibition, which was held in Lagos. He spoke with ADEYEMI ADEPETUN on how technology can aid Nigeria in addressing the several security lapses in the country. Excerpts

What is Western Digital’s interest in the recent security conference in Nigeria? Western Digital is a pioneer leader in hard disc drive storage facilities in the world.

We manufacture best in class external and internal hard drives that are used for Information Technology (IT) surveillance. Our Purple Drive is synonymous with surveillance and the idea is to provide customers with every security details about surveillance.

In Nigeria, particularly in Ikeja Computer Village market, we have carried out a lot of investments in the area of branding and customer awareness of our solutions, as well as educational seminars for our customers.

The technology market is evolving in Nigeria and we will continue to invest in the Nigerian market in the area of IT surveillance.   Our interest for attending the 2015 SECUREX West Africa event is to meet with more Systems Integrators within and outside Nigeria and to showcase to them and others, the latest in surveillance technology, which is our line of business.

How can WD surveillance solutions address insecurity situation in the country? Our surveillance solutions can address insecurity situation in Nigeria and not only in Nigeria, but in all places where there are insecurity issues.

But I must say that Nigeria is not the only country with security challenges, because several other countries of the globe are also faced with the same kind of challenges.

We created our surveillance solution to address insecurity challenges. For example our Purple Drive solution is capable to monitoring troubled environment 24/7 non-stop and capture images of people and objects in such environment.

The WD Purple surveillance storage is built for 24/7 always-on surveillance in high-definition security systems that use up to eight hard drives and up to 32 cameras.

Exclusive All Frame technology works with other streaming to reduce error pixilation and video interruptions that occur when desktop hard drives are incorrectly used as storage in security systems.

Do you have surveillance solution for highway tracking? We do not provide solutions for highway tracking. We are Storage Company and we provide security solutions from the backend facilities of a company or data centre.

What we do is to produce the drive that is stored at the backend device to monitor and capture movement of people.

So if there is an unfortunate incidence like theft or anything else, the hard disc drive could be retrieved from the backend device and played with the aid of another device, to show the picture and voice form, and all that transpired within the given period.

How far have you been able to convince government in appreciating the strength of your solution? We have not engaged the Nigerian government on this, but we have plans to do so because the solution, no doubt, will be of immense value for Nigeria.

We are however discussing with some technology systems integrator who work directly with the government, to sell the solution to government. Can you share some success stories about your solutions where it has been deployed? In Nigeria, most banks are currently using our solutions and they have all commended WD for the agility of the solutions.

Outside Nigeria such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where our solutions have also been deployed, we are equally getting positive feedbacks on the efficiency of the solutions.

Systems Integrators that are providing security solutions for Nigerian banks and banks outside the country depend on our surveillance solution and they are happy doing so.

What has your solution done in the financial sector to help stem frequent cases of fraud? We have a surveillance solution that is currently being deployed in banks, but it does not stop financial fraud, but can detect physical movement of people who may be suspects of financial frauds in banks.

Again if there is any unfortunate incidence like armed robbery in the bank, our solution is capable of capturing the picture of those involved. When the data that is stored in our drive is retrieved and played on a device, it will show clearly those involved in the crime. WD has been operating in Nigeria since 2008.

What is your current market share? I cannot comment on our market share in Nigeria for now because we do not have a third party company that will assess and release statistics of our market share and market penetration in Nigeria, but one thing that is sure is that WD is a market leader in internal and external hard disc drive for IT surveillance globally.

What are your core product solutions? Our core product solutions are focused on security surveillance. Our internal hard disc storage is called Storage Technology Business Unit and the external hard disc storage is called the Consumer Storage Business Unit.

These are the two major sectors we concentrate on and we have further diversified the Consumer Storage Business Unit, to include My Cloud Storage.

In the Storage Technology Business Unit, we concentrate on surveillance driven by Purple Drives, Red Drives, and the Green and Blue drives.  We equally have the Enterprise Unit that deals with data centres.

What is the level of WD investment in Nigeria? Since 2008 when we began operation in Nigeria, we have been investing in people and in the surveillance business in Nigeria and we will continue to do so.

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