A South African based startup called Snapdisk is looking to venture into cloud computing to create jobs and promote revenue generation in Africa, following its launch in February this year.
Snapdisk’s move reflects recent research findings released by Microsoft and conducted by analyst firm IDC that indicated cloud computing could create up to 14-million jobs globally, by 2015, with an estimated 145 000 in South Africa alone.
The research also predicted revenues from cloud innovation could reach $1.1 trillion per year by 2015, which if combined with cloud efficiencies would drive significant organisational reinvestment and job growth.
Another research by Gartner, an IT consulting firm, showed more than 27 percent of firms adopting the cloud computing with the figures set to grow.
For one to use Snapdisk, they have to sign in, download and upload the Snapdisk software either on their phones, tablets or computers and then launch the service.
”we want people to use the service as much as they like and though some may hoard it, we want them to enjoy our heavy storage for all their stuff,” said Shaun Adler, the founder.
Snapdisk has three packages. The free online Backup service for both PC and Mac, with more than 500 GB of free storage for a year as a trial service, which Adler believes would encourage small business to sign up after using it.
The second package, the Sync service, enables users to sync files on various computers, access via mobile, and use the service anywhere at only $ 8.95 a month for 500 GB.
The third package is the Pro for both backup and sync allowing more than 1TB of online storage with FTP, SFTP and WebDav access to the Sync portion of the account.
Although Snapdisk offers 500 GB free for a month, it has to compete against the already established service Dropbox, founded in 2007, that boasts of more than 50 million
Snapdisk is a startup by Motillion
