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Data protection initiatives may fall flat without these three key attributes

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4 years ago

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Data protection

Benchmarks show Huawei’s OceanProtect surpasses peer

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, November 22, 2022/APO Group/ — 

As modern enterprises hail data as the lifeblood of their business, comprehensive data protection has become paramount. Indeed, the accelerated pace of digital transformation in recent years has made data a fundamental and strategic business resource as well as a key production factor.

Already, data is being generated, consumed and stored at an unprecedented pace. According to IDC, global data creation and replication is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 23 percent from 2020 to 2025. In 2020, 64.2 ZB of data were created or replicated. The research firm reckons that the amount of digital data created over the next five years will be greater than twice the amount of data created since the advent of digital storage.

The data deluge is prompting prudent companies to refocus IT budgets on protecting data, especially their most critical business asset – production data.

Efficiency, performance, reliability

The cost of data protection aside, the major challenge for IT is to mitigate the risk of a devastating data loss in the face of mounting ransomware attacks and data breaches.

Further, the rapid development cycles of modern cloud-native application environments and evolving data-intensive applications – such as artificial intelligence, automation, Internet of Things and video surveillance – have increased the required levels of protection, performance and scale dramatically.

Such demands overwhelm the capabilities of traditional backup tools. In this exacting IT landscape, enterprises need data protection solutions that bear three critical attributes: highly efficient data reduction rates, fast backup and recovery performance, and highly reliable and available data copies

Data reduction efficiency enables enterprises to store and transfer large amounts of backup data expeditiously so they can optimize investments in storage hardware, increase effective capacity and reduce total cost of ownership.

Fast backup and recovery performance enables businesses to minimize operational downtime or disruption, especially in the aftermath of a ransomware attack. Underpinning these is reliability. Having a good, clean backup to recover from lays the foundation for an effective data protection strategy.

Geared to deliver these benefits, the Huawei OceanProtect data protection solution adopts a unified approach – protecting exabytes of structured and unstructured data generated by databases, file systems and VMware virtual machines (VMs) – that ensures zero service disruption, zero data loss, and long-term information retention.

Huawei OceanProtect outperforms peer

A recent report (https://bit.ly/3i0CJzG) jointly published by Evaluator Group presented results of comprehensive benchmarking tests that compare the Huawei OceanProtect (https://bit.ly/3ERCIqI) data protection system with a peer product, the Dell EMC PowerProtect DD, based on the three attributes mentioned above.

The test environment was configured for function and performance verification. Network connectivity and hosts had the same configurations. Each data protection system was connected to seven servers through IP switches. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 x86_64 operating system was deployed on four of the servers for performance tests.

VMware virtualization applications and Oracle database applications were deployed on two servers to compare and verify data reduction ratios in different scenarios. The other server was used as the media server for the backup application Veritas NetBackup (NBU).

Rapid backup and recovery

To test backup and recovery speed, the primary tool utilized was vdbench in file mode. The aim is to accurately perform file operations while ensuring high I/O rates to files as desired. The choice of tool removes potential bottlenecks from the backup application as well as any bias for or against any third-party backup application.

The Huawei OceanProtect and Dell EMC PowerProtect systems each included a storage pool created with a 1 PB filesystem. The filesystem was then NFS mounted to eight mount points on each of the four machines running the workloads. High performance optimizations were set for both test systems.

Test results show that Huawei OceanProtect’s Oracle backup performance of 6,853 MB/s was 2.6 times faster than the 2,621 MB/s clocked by the peer product from Dell EMC. In the VM backup performance test, OceanProtect’s speed of 8,004 MB/s was 2.4 times faster than the peer product’s 3,383 MB/s.

The research firm reckons that the amount of digital data created over the next five years will be greater than twice the amount of data created since the advent of digital storage

Next, the write performance of both systems was measured by simulating the first full backup of general applications. Here, Huawei OceanProtect’s 10,591 MB/s was 2.3 times faster than the peer product’s 4.640 MB/s.

Overall, Huawei OceanProtect delivered more than two times faster backup data rates than its leading competitor. The test results bolster Huawei OceanProtect’s status as a solution that creates opportunities for improved system utilization, cost savings and management efficiency.

After the backup simulations, the read bandwidth recovery performance of both systems was simulated and tested. The application restore performance comparison showed that Huawei OceanProtect’s read bandwidth after the first backup is 1.5 times that for the Dell EMC system.

Since the recovery test was performed after the first backup, the read bandwidth of systems like Dell EMC’s, which use rotating media (i.e. hard disk drive), will decline as additional backups are created and backup data become scattered. In contrast, this has little impact on the all-flash OceanProtect system so its recovery speed advantage over those systems would increase with additional backups.

Efficient data reduction

The NBU application was used to verify the data reduction ratios of both products in daily full backups of Oracle database and VM data.

The Oracle database to be backed up was activated with the NBU client installed and user authentication on the NBU client and Oracle database completed. From the management pages of both systems, Evaluator Group observed that the data reduction ratio of Huawei OceanProtect for daily full backup of the Oracle database was 43.4, higher than the 28.1 for the Dell EMC product.

The Linux VM to be backed up was prepared on each solution’s VMware ESXi server. Again, the Huawei OceanProtect’s data reduction ratio of 29.3 for daily full backup of VM data was higher than the peer product’s ratio of 19.7.

By achieving approximately 50 percent greater reduction ratios for various data, Huawei OceanProtect has an effective capacity of nearly 50 percent greater than Dell EMC PowerProtect when configured with the same raw capacity.

OceanProtect’s high data reduction ratios is an endorsement of its efficient usage of data storage infrastructure. Using advanced algorithms and byte-level compaction technologies, OceanProtect breaks data into chunks based on the source and other data characteristics before it deduplicates, compresses and compacts the data further.

High reliability

The Evaluator Group also observed how the simultaneous failure of any three disks in a storage pool affects backup services on both backup storage systems.

The analysts installed and configured the file backup client, prepared the test data, and recorded the Message-Digest algorithm 5 (MD5) value of the test data. They created a 1 TB NFS file share in a storage pool on the Huawei OceanProtect system and a 1 TB Mtree NFS file share in a storage pool on the Dell EMC system. Strikingly, OceanProtect supports RAID triple-parity (RAID-TP) but the peer product does not.

The file shares were mapped to the backup server as a backup storage repository. The analysts then ran a full backup of the files on the two systems. Data from this completed backup was then restored. The success of the recovery was verified by calculating the MD5 value of the restored file and using it to check the integrity of the restored data.

Meanwhile, the full backup job was run on the common file again. When this job was initiated, three disks were removed from the storage pool. Then, the status and alarms of the affected storage pool as well as the running status of the backup task were checked.

Consequently, the backup services of Huawei OceanProtect remained normal and showed no loss of access to data, but the backup services of the peer product from Dell EMC reported errors. Equipped with dual-controller active-active architecture, RAID-TP and ransomware prevention technologies, Huawei OceanProtect is well positioned to deliver 99.9999 percent availability, as can be shown by real-life examples beyond the lab.

Conclusion

The Evaluator Group’s test results evidently show that the Huawei OceanProtect outperforms the peer product in all three critical aspects: data reduction ratio, backup and recovery speed, and reliability.

Significantly, Huawei OceanProtect’s superior capabilities translate to shorter backup windows and data recovery times, reduced expenditure, and higher levels of uptime. They also affirm OceanProtect’s trustworthiness as an intelligent all-flash backup storage designed to address enterprises’ data protection pain points in a dynamic, data-intensive digital economy.

To know more about Huawei OceanProtect, please click here (https://bit.ly/3OtHihX).

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Huawei Enterprise.

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Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo’s (SNPC) Maixent Raoul Ominga to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at African Energy Week (AEW) 2026

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July 3, 2026

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The award recognizes decades of leadership by the SNPC Director General in shaping the company’s growth and investment strategy, while strengthening the Republic of Congo’s position in Africa’s energy landscape

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, July 2, 2026/APO Group/ –Maixent Raoul Ominga, Director General of Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo (SNPC), has been named the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at African Energy Week (AEW) 2026. The honor recognizes more than two decades of service to Congo’s national oil company and a leadership career that has helped transform SNPC into a stronger, more diversified and increasingly influential energy company.

The Lifetime Achievement Award is the highest distinction presented during the African Energy Awards, held annually as part of AEW. The non-voting category recognizes individuals whose careers have left a lasting mark on Africa’s energy industry through sustained leadership, institutional development, investment promotion and contributions to regional cooperation.

Few leaders know SNPC as intimately as Ominga. Joining the company in 2001 in the finance and accounting department, he steadily rose through the ranks before being appointed Director General in 2018. Reappointed in 2022 and again in 2025 following the adoption of SNPC’s revised corporate statutes, his continued tenure reflects sustained confidence in a leadership style centered on long-term institutional growth, operational discipline and continuity.

Maixent Raoul Ominga represents the kind of steady, visionary leadership that has helped transform SNPC into a more resilient and forward-looking national oil company

Under Ominga’s leadership, SNPC has evolved from a traditional national oil company into a broader energy player with an expanding upstream portfolio and growing regional profile. The company continues to hold interests in many of the Republic of Congo’s largest producing assets while participating in new discoveries that have reinforced the country’s long-term exploration potential.

A defining feature of Ominga’s tenure has been a strategic shift toward long-term value creation through gas monetization. Under his direction, SNPC has played a central role in supporting the Congo LNG project, helping position the Republic of Congo among Africa’s emerging LNG exporters and accelerating the country’s transition toward large-scale gas development.

Institutional transformation has been equally central to his leadership. Ominga has overseen organizational restructuring, strengthened corporate governance and placed greater emphasis on operational performance, while steering SNPC toward increased use of domestic capital markets to reduce reliance on international lenders and strengthen local financial capacity. He has also prioritized workforce development, greater gender inclusion in leadership and the development of internal capabilities supporting gas and new energy initiatives.

His influence has extended well beyond SNPC. A longstanding advocate for stronger collaboration among Africa’s national oil companies, Ominga has consistently promoted regional partnerships, African financing solutions and energy sovereignty as essential to unlocking the continent’s long-term investment potential. This vision has helped elevate both SNPC’s regional profile and the Republic of Congo’s role in Africa’s evolving energy landscape.

Ominga’s leadership has also been recognized beyond the energy sector. In 2026, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Ligue universelle du bien public, recognizing his leadership, commitment to the public good and contributions to economic and social development. The distinction reflects a leadership philosophy that extends beyond commercial performance, emphasizing institution-building, human capital development and the role of energy in supporting national progress.

“Maixent Raoul Ominga represents the kind of steady, visionary leadership that has helped transform SNPC into a more resilient and forward-looking national oil company,” said NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber. “His commitment to building local capacity, strengthening governance and positioning Congo’s energy sector for the future makes him a deserving recipient of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award. We congratulate him on this well-earned recognition.”

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Energy Chamber.

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Islamic Development Bank Institute (IsDBI) and Centre of Islamic Finance, Compliance and Advice (CIFCA) Forge Strategic Partnership to Advance Islamic Finance in Tanzania

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3 hours ago

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July 3, 2026

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Tanzania

The collaboration aligns with the strategic priorities of both institutions to support the development of robust, ethical, and inclusive financial systems grounded in the principles and values of Islamic finance

BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 2, 2026/APO Group/ –The Islamic Development Bank Institute (IsDBI) (www.IsDBInstitute.org) and the Tanzania-based Centre of Islamic Finance, Compliance and Advice (CIFCA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen cooperation in advancing Islamic finance, capacity development, professional certification, research, and knowledge dissemination.

The MoU was signed on the sidelines of the 2026 IsDB Group Annual Meetings, held from 16-19 June in Baku, Azerbaijan. The partnership seeks to leverage the complementary strengths of both organizations to promote excellence in Islamic finance education and professional development in Tanzania, while contributing to the broader objectives of sustainable and inclusive economic development beyond IsDB Member Countries.

 

As Tanzania is not an IsDB Member Country, the MoU allows the IsDBI and CIFCA to explore cooperation on a range of human capital programs that serve the Muslim community and contribute to the progress of the Tanzanian economy at large.

 

CIFCA plays an important role in accelerating financial inclusion and driving the development of Shariah-compliant financial systems across Tanzania. Endorsed by the Government of Tanzania as an Islamic finance advisory body, CIFCA collaborates with key entities like the Bank of Tanzania, and the Capital Markets and Securities Authority. It facilitated the launch of landmark projects, including checking and certifying major public Sukuk listings on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange. Furthermore, CIFCA also offers professional certifications and training programs to build local academic and professional capacity.

Human capital remains one of the most critical pillars for the sustainable growth of Islamic finance

 

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Sami Al-Suwailem, Acting Director General of IsDB Institute, emphasized the importance of investing in talent and knowledge as key enablers of a vibrant Islamic finance ecosystem. He said, “Human capital remains one of the most critical pillars for the sustainable growth of Islamic finance. Through this partnership, we look forward to working closely with CIFCA to promote knowledge, professional excellence, and innovation that can enhance the developmental impact of Islamic finance.”

 

Mr. Aref Mbarak Nahdi, Chairman of CIFCA highlighted the significance of the collaboration in fostering globally recognized professional standards and competencies within the industry. “This partnership reflects our shared commitment to nurturing future leaders and practitioners who can contribute meaningfully to the continued advancement of Islamic finance and its role in addressing contemporary economic and social challenges,” he noted.

 

The collaboration aligns with the strategic priorities of both institutions to support the development of robust, ethical, and inclusive financial systems grounded in the principles and values of Islamic finance.

 

As Islamic finance continues to expand across diverse markets, the partnership is expected to contribute to the development of skilled professionals, enhanced institutional capacity, and greater knowledge exchange that will ultimately strengthen the industry’s ability to serve society and promote sustainable prosperity.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Islamic Development Bank Institute (IsDBI).

 

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Africa Finance Corporation Returns to Global Capital Markets with US$500 Million Eurobond, Achieving Record-Tight Pricing and Central Bank Participation

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3 hours ago

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July 3, 2026

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Africa Finance Corporation

The landmark outcome reflects AFC’s strong credit fundamentals, disciplined financial management, and growing recognition among global investors as a premier investment-grade issuer focused on Africa’s infrastructure and industrial development

LONDON, United Kingdom, July 2, 2026/APO Group/ –Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) (www.AfricaFC.org), the continent’s leading infrastructure solutions provider, has successfully raised US$500 million through a 5-year Reg S Only senior unsecured Eurobond, achieving the tightest pricing ever secured by the Corporation on a 5-year US dollar benchmark transaction. The issuance reached a new segment of institutional investors, with central banks, including an African one, participating in an AFC bond for the first time. This milestone speaks to AFC’s growing appeal among global reserve managers seeking high-quality investment-grade assets with strong developmental impact.

 

The notes were issued at a coupon of 5.375%, representing AFC’s narrowest spread over US Treasuries for a benchmark 5-year issuance and a significant improvement over the Corporation’s previous Eurobond transaction completed in 2024. The landmark outcome reflects AFC’s strong credit fundamentals, disciplined financial management, and growing recognition among global investors as a premier investment-grade issuer focused on Africa’s infrastructure and industrial development.

This transaction reflects the strong confidence global investors continue to place in AFC, our strategy, and our role in advancing Africa’s economic transformation

The issuance attracted strong demand from high-quality institutional investors across the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, the United States and the Middle East. The order book closed approximately two times oversubscribed, underscoring sustained investor confidence in AFC’s investment-grade credit profile. The notes are rated A by S&P Global Ratings and A3 by Moody’s Ratings, in line with AFC’s long-term issuer ratings.

Samaila Zubairu, President & CEO of AFC said, “This transaction reflects the strong confidence global investors continue to place in AFC, our strategy, and our role in advancing Africa’s economic transformation. Achieving our tightest-ever pricing on a US dollar benchmark issuance demonstrates the strength of our credit profile, the consistency of our financial performance, and the trust we have built with investors over time. As we continue to scale our impact across the continent, access to efficient and diversified sources of capital remains critical to delivering the infrastructure and industrial assets that drive long-term growth and competitiveness.”

Banji Fehintola, Executive Board Member and Head of Financial Services at AFC, said, “The success of this transaction underscores AFC’s ability to consistently access international capital markets on increasingly competitive terms, even amid a dynamic global environment. The participation of an African central bank for the first time further diversifies our funding base and advances AFC’s strategy of mobilizing African institutional capital to finance the continent’s development. The exceptional quality and geographic diversity of investor participation, together with record-tight pricing, reflect strong market confidence in AFC’s disciplined funding strategy, prudent balance sheet management and proven track record of delivering transformative infrastructure across Africa.”

Issued under AFC’s US$5 billion Global Medium-Term Note Programme, the proceeds will support the Corporation’s general funding requirements and continue to strengthen its capacity to finance critical infrastructure and industrial projects across Africa. The transaction was led by Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank PJSC, First Abu Dhabi Bank PJSC, Goldman Sachs International, J.P. Morgan Securities plc, Mizuho International plc, MUFG Securities EMEA plc, Standard Chartered Bank and The Standard Bank of South Africa Limited as Joint Lead Managers.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Africa Finance Corporation (AFC).

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