Jones says the cornerstone for the company is still its high-end enterprise storage customer base, but the company needs to focus on SMEs and solutions for branch offices of larger organizations, "as this is a major growth area in South Africa and the UK and shows a lot of promise."

In the mid-tier section of the market, HDS competes with companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Sun and Dell, and this year launched its TagmaStore Network Storage Controller, which targets the midrange and SME markets - distributed locally through Shoden Data Systems, its sole distributor.

Says Jones: "Five years ago we were a 100 percent hardware company, currently we are sitting at 70 percent hardware, 20 percent software, 10 percent services. And, by the end of 2006 we want our figures to reflect 60 percent hardware, 20 percent software and 20 percent services."

By 2008, notes Jones, the company wants to position itself as a company providing 50 percent hardware, 25 percent software and 25 percent services, which requires a year-on-year growth of between 20 percent - 25 percent for the next two years.

"Storage today is all about automation, simplification and virtualization. It is about managing storage effectively to free up capacity and time in order to concentrate on other aspects of the business. Companies need the after-sales services to do that, and that is why we are focusing on increasing our service part of the business," Jones concludes.