Western Digital Corporation, commonly known as WD, is a computer hard disk drive manufacturer and data storage company. It designs, manufactures, and sells data technology products, including storage devices, data center systems, and cloud storage services. Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director, Middle East talks about WD’s SME and enterprise-specific products.

Speak about the merits of WD’s data center platforms and drives in the business-centric market

Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. As a leader in data infrastructure, the company is driving the innovation needed to help customers capture, preserve, access, and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. Everywhere data lives, from advanced data centers to mobile sensors to personal devices, our industry-leading solutions deliver the possibilities of data. Western Digital data-centric solutions are comprised of the Western Digital, SanDisk, and WD brands.

Innovation has always fuelled and nurtured growth at Western Digital. It is as important now, as any time in our history. Western Digital has long been at the forefront of game-changing innovations. From the invention of the first hard drive to recent advancements in 3D NAND our journey of innovation continues to inspire those who dare to think big about the possibilities of data.

Western Digital participates in multiple collaborations with external organizations to provide Western Digital access to resources and knowledge that can be applied to improving current products and developing new technologies or products, and generate value from the data stored on our devices. It is the efforts and the direction of our esteemed global management that drive our competitive edge and continued success in the market.

What sorts of concentration and association WD has with SMEs and large enterprises? Briefly explain the product line you have for them

Robust storage solutions are needed for the rising needs of businesses and consumers. Western Digital offers a portfolio of products, covering a range of market segments, created to enable customers to derive valuable insights and intelligence from data.

WD Ultrastar for businesses: An enterprise-grade drive, designed for cloud service providers, telcos, and system integrators. The Ultrastar Edge servers are easy to transport, deploy and scale in the field, at co-location (colo) facilities, factories, or in remote data centers. It delivers blazing speed and capacity for real-time analytics, AI, deep learning, ML training and inference, and video transcoding at the edge.

WD Gold NVMe SSDs: It improves system responsiveness and boosts productivity while lowering overall TCO. Enterprise teams can work with confidence knowing they have power loss protection and the ability to stop anyone from accessing sensitive data by eliminating it with fast and effective secure erase technology. It is available in a range of capacities to meet a business’ specific needs. WD Gold NVMe SSDs can work alone or perfectly complement WD Gold HDDs and other HDDs to handle tough workloads with endurance businesses can trust.

Give us an insight into the features of WD’s newest SSDs released to the market

If we’re looking at SSD’s that support SMBs, then we must talk about NAS – network-attached storage – as it’s one of the most widely used methods for accessing, sharing, and protecting data alongside the cloud. NAS solutions help SMBs solve for latency and remote shared access to data or applications across the network.

Leveraging our strength and leadership in a flash, we recently announced our new WD Red SN700 NVMe SSD, a high-endurance, a fast-caching solution that accelerates NAS performance for SMB customers.

This powerful new drive is engineered to support 24/7 NAS environments and always-on applications with the ultimate in reliability and endurance. Its fast system responsiveness and I/O performance are perfect for multi-user, multi-application environments, letting SMBs tame their toughest projects from virtualization to collaborative editing to intensive database storage.

Given the need for robust systems that are efficient and intuitive to manage, and in many cases, they need some sort of infrastructure on-premises. A NAS solution can benefit SMBs of all sizes, providing the performance, capacity, and reliability they need.

Are you planning to present products or solutions at the GITEX Technology Week? If so, which are they?

At GITEX, we are keeping a pulse on current data trends with a showcase of products to meet the needs of today’s businesses. As a leader in data infrastructure, Western Digital is driving the innovation needed to help customers capture, preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. Everywhere data lives, from advanced data centers to mobile sensors to personal devices, our industry-leading solutions deliver the possibilities of data. At GITEX, you will find Western Digital data-centric solutions, comprised of the Western Digital, SanDisk, and WD brands. Each brand offers a range of capacities to meet a business’s specific needs.

How do you evaluate WD’s business prospects for the next two years, in terms of expansion, growth, tie-ups, etc.?

As the market leader, we know we have a responsibility to our consumers to stay ahead of the competition. And we do this through strategic collaborations, innovations, and actively listening to our customers.

Whether in your pocket, home, car, or the cloud, it’s likely Western Digital is with you every step of the way. It’s a responsibility we don’t take lightly. That’s why we are always at the cusp of innovation, pushing the boundaries of technology to make what you thought was once impossible, possible.

Western Digital understands that the next few years will be an exciting time for smart technology providers in the middle east. The market is growing, and consumers are excited for what’s coming next, but a lack of knowledge around smart technology infrastructure threatens this progress and the gains that will go with it.

As various technologies continue to evolve so will the data storage needs and how to get the best value from it. Western Digital is prepared to support the growing digital needs of companies and consumers with specialized storage solutions to create optimum value from IoT data, which must be considered when building out the wider data infrastructure.