Addressing the surging enterprise storage demand

Santosh Varghese, Managing Director of Tosh Nxt Tech Ventures, regional partner for Toshiba Storage, explains how Toshiba’s roadmap, BYODC initiative, and localized market strategy are positioning the company for sustained growth.

You mentioned highlights around demand and sales growth. How would you describe 2025 so far for Toshiba in the region?

2025 has been a phenomenal year for us. Demand for storage has increased exponentially, largely driven by the AI revolution. Every business today wants to be part of the AI journey, and AI servers require massive storage capacity to train and run models effectively. This has significantly fuelled demand for enterprise storage. From a technology standpoint, Toshiba is well positioned. We already offer capacities up to 30TB, and our roadmap extends beyond 40TB in the coming quarters. Research indicates that nearly 166 zettabytes of data will be generated by 2027, and all of that data needs to be stored somewhere.

Our strength lies in offering a complete 360-degree storage portfolio. This includes external hard drives for personal computing, the S300 series for surveillance, and in 2025 we introduced the S300 AI, specifically designed for AI-driven surveillance workloads. On the enterprise side, our MG series continues to scale in both capacity and efficiency, delivering higher density with lower power consumption. As a result, we are seeing year-on-year growth of over 50–60 percent. At the same time, demand has become so strong that availability is emerging as a bottleneck, as businesses race to prepare their data centers for AI workloads. This is where our regional strategies are focused, aligning supply, technology, and partnerships to meet customer needs.

How successful has the BYODC (Build Your Own Data Center) initiative been?
BYODC is a unique and strategic initiative from Toshiba. We recognized early on that many organizations want to build their own on-premises or private cloud data centers, especially as AI adoption accelerates. Businesses that fail to adopt AI risk falling behind very quickly.

Through BYODC, we create an ecosystem that brings together Toshiba, system integrators, and customers. We help businesses design and build data centers using best-of-breed components, resulting in total cost of ownership that is nearly 30 percent lower, while remaining highly scalable. Organizations can start small, at terabyte scale, and grow to petabytes or even exabytes as their needs expand. The initiative has seen strong success in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, was rolled out in South Africa last year, and is now expanding across other GCC markets and Africa. This was a vision we laid out back in 2022, and we are proud of how it is gaining traction today.

Can you outline the product roadmap ahead?
Our flagship enterprise offering remains the MG series. These drives are helium-filled, designed for lower power consumption, and currently offer up to 30TB capacity, with the roadmap extending beyond 40TB in the near future.

On the surveillance side, the S300 series continues to scale in capacity, now enhanced with AI capabilities. We also serve small and mid-sized businesses through our NAS drives, while our consumer portfolio, including external Canvio drives, addresses the need for reliable personal data backup. Many users still prefer not to store critical data entirely on the cloud, making local backup increasingly important.

Together, this forms a comprehensive storage portfolio that addresses enterprise, SMB, surveillance, and consumer needs.

What is the focus when it comes to market and channel expansion?

ToshNxt manages nearly 40 countries across the Middle East and Africa from Dubai, but our strategy is not centralized. Localization is key. Each market has its own dynamics, and our success comes from tailoring strategies accordingly. This approach explains our strong market share; around 30 percent in several countries, nearly 50 percent in Saudi Arabia, and about 35 percent in South Africa. We work closely with channel partners through initiatives like our Channel Connect program, which focuses on training, feedback, and continuous improvement.

In Africa, our Go Africa strategy ensures that we bring the latest technologies to the market, not obsolete products. These regions have immense potential, and our localized, partner-led approach is critical to unlocking that growth.

What is driving storage demand from businesses today?

Historically, businesses stored data mainly for compliance and legal retention. Today, the role of data has changed completely. Organizations are actively using analytics to extract insights and drive better business decisions. Data has effectively become a currency. Storage is no longer passive; it is central to analytics, AI, and strategic decision-making. This shift is one of the strongest drivers behind the sustained growth we are seeing in the storage industry.