Meet Derek Street, Managing Executive of StorVault – a division of Sithabile Technology Services and a cloud-based data backup and storage management service utilising a world-class cloud infrastructure that is hosted in a premier data centre located in South Africa.
StorVault is focused on simplifying cloud backup and storage, making it easy for all users to understand how to apply this critically important discipline and how to maximise the benefits they offer in terms of dramatically lower, predictable operating costs and enhanced levels of personal productivity and organisational efficiency.
Derek says that StorVault services meet the data protection needs of all users – from a single home user to enterprises with many thousands of users; and from capacities that range from a few megabytes of personal information to thousands of terabytes of priceless corporate data.
StorVault was started over 12 years ago when their holding company, Sithabile Technology Services (which Derek says is one of South Africa’s most acclaimed data storage service providers) identified a need for offsite storage that was not based on traditional tape technologies.
They found that having data safely and securely stored while at the same time being able to guarantee that it was always secure and easily accessible was of major concern and interest to their customer base of leading blue-chip companies throughout the national economy.
Initially aimed at enterprise companies, economy of scale enabled them to offer this enterprise offering to any type of organisation at a very affordable and attractive pricing.
What Derek loves most about the work that he does, and what brings him abiding joy, is making things easier for users and giving them total peace-of-mind when it comes to preserving the integrity of all data that they choose to store and retain. He finds an incredible amount of satisfaction from the fact that their services so eloquently address and overcome critical issues and problems that may have been grappled with for years, and at enormous cost, in terms of anxiety levels and monetary outlay.
One of the biggest lessons Derek has learnt on his business journey is that transparency and honesty are the cornerstones of his business journey and that they have been fundamental in underscoring the success of StorVault’s ability to work as a unified team. He believes that the ability to conduct business successfully, at any level in any economy and under all socioeconomic conditions, is based on building personal relationships that rely on trust and integrity. This applies to customers, suppliers, and colleagues.
Derek does what he does not only because its a rewarding and satisfying job but he has found that by being part of a small, highly motivated and committed team there is no end to the satisfaction they draw from the feeling of being friends as well as colleagues. He says that this environment extends beyond the day-to-day interactions that they experience within StorVault and into the Sithabile group as a whole, as well as among their business partners and into their customer base. He thinks that this foundation enables them to live according to the old adage first
coined by Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, who said: “Out of adversity comes opportunity”.
Derek says that this has never been more apparent than under the abnormal conditions now widely described as the “New Normal” and imposed on us all by the COVID-19 pandemic. He says that their data storage services are playing a key role in helping users adapt to working, playing and learning from remote locations and their ability to safeguard and access their invaluable data at the click of a mouse.
Derek believes that the best way to grow an economy and to address unemployment is to foster small business. He says that with the appropriate support small businesses grow and become medium to large organisations that nurture and expand job creation and support extended communities. There is also an advantage to working with small business as they tend to be more personal, flexible and agile than bigger business. He believes this to be a huge advantage as it generates focus, care and attention to detail that helps guarantee the delivery of measurable business value
and enhanced customer satisfaction that is not always within the capabilities of large, cumbersome organisations.
StorVault offerings the following five primary services:
- StorVault Endpoint – a service designed to enable organisations of any size to safeguard data created on desktops or laptops – from a sole proprietor working from home to enterprises faced with a widely dispersed mobile workforce operating from frontiers without borders.
- StorVault for Office 365 – complete, policy-driven backup and recovery services for Microsoft® Office 365™ applications as well as for mission-critical collaboration tools in the Office 365 productivity suite.
- StorVault Server – accommodates business-critical data residing on dedicated servers or virtual machines with support for a broad range of operating systems, applications and databases.
- StorVault FileSpace – the CLOUD NAS -is ideal for organizations that would like to take advantage of cloud storage economics and utilize it for applications, file systems, and collaboration workloads.
- StorVault Storage Cloud – Addresses the long-term or archival data storage requirements of small to enterprise organisations faced with spiralling storage costs. Their solution is suited for all organisation with easy to use and easy to understand costing model.
StorVault is a proud Premier Member of the NSBC.
If you would like more information about becoming an NSBC Member visit www.nsbc.africa.