By Editor
Demand for NAS continues to soar, as these versatile storage solutions find a new market in homes and SOHO environments. Khwaja Saifudin, Senior Sales Director, Middle East, Africa and India at WD discusses how the storage giant is doing to capture these emerging markets
Why is there more interest now for NAS systems especially for home users?
The biggest driver for demand today is that the digital content for individuals at home is growing exponentially. In the past, a portable external hard drives would suffice with movies in the 500MB range but today with HD movies that are over 10GB each, you need bigger storage. As storage needs grow, the consumer typically requires a bigger place to put them, not just in terms of size of the box, but in the amount of content that can be saved. So from a pure storage perspective, if someone needs an 8TB or a 16TB storage space, they have to go for a NAS solution. Second is the cloud capability of today’s NAS systems where you can store at one place and access the content somewhere else through the web.
Discuss the capabilities and features of NAS systems for SOHO and small businesses
For SOHO and SMBs, there is typically more than one person accessing the system at any given time with multiple reads and writes happening as well. Better security and more privacy are needed so features such as password protection as well as redundant power supply come standard. So you start from a basic SMB solution that we have and then keep growing from there. From a WD perspective, we start with the myCloud solution for home users and the EX2 and EX4 for the SOHO environment. Up the scale and we have the Sentinel range for SMB environments where the processors in those four bay systems are faster with higher amount of cache memory, power redundancy and other more advanced features.
Is the proliferation of cheaper no-brand NAS systems affecting profitability moving forward?
On the contrary, the availability of cheaper products allows us to differentiate ourselves. The features and benefits, the connectivity and the back-up which we can do, customers cannot get with the cheaper brands now in the market. This has helped us position and differentiate ourselves much better because now we have real examples to give.
Discuss how the channel is evolving to keep up with the changing technology landscape
In 2014, we have seen a lot of channel partners who have evolved to offer solutions as opposed to just a commodity. They have come to the vendors and received the training because they realise that the competition is getting stronger and they need to differentiate and give value added services. These who have evolved have come out very profitably and we have seen this in the expansion and the number of stores they are opening up.
Discuss how the consumer side of WD solutions is keeping up with customer demands and expectations
The myPassport wireless registered huge surge in demand within a few weeks of being in the market. We never had a product which was an external product and on top of a wireless connected device with a battery that can last up to six hours. Plus you could have up to five people connected at the same time streaming media with an SD card slot for backing up your content. This is also the perfect solution for families to have some control over the content kids are watching in the plane or in the car. From a consumer perspective, the myPassport wireless has been a game changer.
On the enterprise side, our Red and Purple drives are targeted towards the NAS and surveillance respectively. NAS and surveillance merge at some point from a consumer perspective where they want to set up a NAS system at home and you use the NAS device as a DVR. However, as they move up to eight cameras and more, then you need specialized drives for those applications. We have the products that fulfil the demands and needs of the consumer. Surveillance is also the first step for any municipality with ambitions to become smart and a lot of cities in the region are investing heavily in the Smart City concept.
Currently, the personal cloud solutions are growing well as weaknesses in public cloud solutions become more well-known as well as better understanding of the conveniences of the personal cloud. This is mainly driven by privacy as well as the convenience of having all content saved in a single location and then accessed anywhere in the world.
How do you differentiate between WD and the other major storage vendors?
Our core competency is in the hard drives and we are global pioneers in making the best hard drives for specific applications. Our key differentiator is that we do not go with a one-size-fits-all approach. This is the same thing that we discuss with our technology partners in that everything is specific so the end user knows that they are buying a customized solution. When we are talking to NAS partners such as QNAP and Synology, we are talking to them about their specific needs, in this case the Red NAS drive. If it’s QNAP on their surveillance NAS solution, then we can be able to offer them the Purple drive which is specific for their surveillance NAS box. Further, our products are also approved for compatibility by all NAS solution providers.
What trends can we expect to see in 2015?
In 2015, we are going to see NAS become a more widely available solution in many homes as people increasingly adopt the smart home concept. With a Smart Home, you need something to run the control systems and save all the features and the connectivity. Applications will also be key in how to use and access both the writing and reading data from a NAS solution and that is why WD has developed a range of smartphone apps. In the end, the consumer has a lot of choices, but it’s the convenience, the ease of use and reliability which will be key differentiators moving forward.