Data growth doesn't care that times are tough. South Africa's economic growth forecasts were recently cut from a projected 0.6% in 2016 to an even less encouraging 0.0% by the Reserve Bank. IT teams are under more pressure than ever; doing more with the same, or in many cases with less, is now considered normal. Company data growth still shows no signs of slowing down. And worse, because data is right at the heart of current trends in innovation and digitisation, there are a whole lot of new sources both to make sense of and to store safely somewhere.

Alec Davis, CIO of Growthpoint Properties, agrees that although the economy isn't growing, data is. "It's different sources of data that are growing. In our business, we've always recorded the data inputs of the smart meters, but now, it's a layer lower than that and it's a lot more information. Previously, we had bulk meters that checked what the councils are doing, and we’ve now gone down to the tenant layer. It's a big rollout to do a huge retrofit, but where we are doing new buildings, we're putting in smart meters that record a lot more information. The Internet of Things space is where it's growing and it's massive; you can flatline any storage, any time. The trick is to pick the right data."