In a league of our own

Channel Post speaks with Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Director – Sales, Middle East Africa & South East Asia at WD about the expansion in products and solutions categories during the exciting journey that Western Digital had this year.

Khwaja Saifuddin, Sr. Sales Director. Components Division WD

Briefly outline what developments WD experienced this year and the new products or categories the company has ventured into.

For WD, this year was one with a number of new beginnings whether in terms of products or technology or even addressing needs of our customers from a 360 degree view. The biggest differentiator for us this year was the launch of our SSD range for two reasons. As technology was moving from hard drives to SSDs, this was the only PC storage product that we did not have. More importantly, none of the hard drive or SSD vendors had both products in their portfolio and this move made us stand in a league of our own. We not only increased our customer and partner base but were now able to cater to SIs in geographies like Turkey, South Africa and India that are still assembling PCs. With the SSDs added to our storage product range we were also able to tap into new market segments like gaming where SSDs play an integral role.

In order to expand our customer base and to ensure that we are able to offer all rounded products and solutions to them, Western Digital made some very relevant acquisitions this year in companies like Upthere and Tegile.

Can you elaborate on the strategies behind these acquisitions that you have made and how they fit into WD’s strategy as a storage provider?

The SanDisk acquisition allowed us to add flash storage products to our robust portfolio that address a wide range of applications in computing and mobile devices. While we already had enterprise-class high capacity hard drives, we now find ourselves ahead of the competition since our reach is now extended to different customer segments with requirements starting from as small as 8GB micoSDs up to 4TB hard drives.

The year also saw WD actively adding solutions to our portfolio and not just new products. To address the growing concern of local data storage on mobile devices we acquired a cloud service provider, ‘Upthere’. We also acquired Tegile Systems, a provider of flash and persistent-memory storage solutions for enterprise data center applications, in an effort to strengthen our offerings to the market and increase customer footprint.

Wherever digital content is being generated, data is created and so, all new technologies like cloud, IoT, etc. are built around data storage which is our forte. With these strategic moves, WD wants to bring its message to the market that the company is not simply selling nuts & bolts of a bigger system, but is also providing solutions around its existing product categories to address any kind of storage needs that its customers may have.

Would you say that entering into these new markets means competing with your existing partners?

Our top priority is that the existing customers are satisfied with the products we are offering and are able to satisfy all their storage needs to maintain a continued relationship with us. I view our ventures into these solution-based areas not as competing with our partners but as a way for the company to complement its product portfolio. This is why, a few months back we also launched WD My Cloud, a new personal storage solution. With the My Cloud Home solution consumers can easily store all their personal information in one place, access it anywhere and share with others by providing folder level access, when required.

Today, storage is not just about saving data on a physical device, but is about having both physical and virtual storage options. I would say that these acquisitions, product range expansion and launching new solutions only strengthen WD as a ‘true’ storage provider.

In the Surveillance category, WD already has the Purple range. Is there anything new that you are offering to adapt to the increasing data storage demands in surveillance?

We are dedicated to provide specific, personalized solutions for any particular need and do not have a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Today all IP cameras have a slot for local recording as backup for power failures and thefts. So, this GITEX we re-launched our SD card solutions for surveillance cameras that were not in the forefront earlier. Normal SD cards are not capable of keeping up with this kind of 24×7 need for continuous surveillance and we are the only manufacturer that has a specific solution for this.

What new innovations can consumers expect from you in the near future?

I would say that will be the new technology for writing data on a medium called MAMR or Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording. Earlier there were instances when other vendors tried to expand the disk drive capacity drastically using this technology but did not succeed. We have already launched this technology successfully and will be announcing our ultra-high capacity hard disk drives in 2018 to meet all future Big Data demands.

On the product side, other storage innovations this year include portable external storage SSDs for high-speed data transfers and the highest capacity 400 GB microSD card.

Finally, how important is the channel for you and what can the partners expect from you?

When it comes to our channel, we have always made huge investments in educating the channel on our products and technologies, and get certified as well. As a component vendor, we were the first to come up with an educational portal for our channel partners called WD University for on-demand online product training. We also have the oldest running loyalty program for our MSPs, VARs and system integrators known as myWD Partner Program.

We have long-standing relationships with most of our partners in addition to strong presence and understanding of the storage market as well. Our partners can expect our complete and continued support in all their endeavours. They can also be assured that WD will continue to bring the most relevant and innovative products and technologies to give them the required edge to stay ahead of the market.

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