Khwaja Saifuddin, the Senior Sales Director for India, Middle East, Africa and Turkey at WD, speaks about the ever-increasing importance of storage
How has the regional storage market grown over the years?
The regional storage market has matured appreciably in recent years. Today, end users whether they fall into the consumer, SMB or enterprise categories are more educated and embrace new storage technologies at a pace on par with the developed Western markets.
Storage is taken far more seriously on every level, as users have come to realize that the right product or solution can make a massive difference to their day-to-day existence.
What sort of trends do you see as far as storage as a technology is concerned?
The demand for storage is increasing at a tremendous pace and today, for end customers, the focus is not just on buying any storage product but a product that fully supports their lifestyle.
Consumers are actively opting for higher capacity drives (1TB and above) or even dual drives such as the recently launched WD Black2, which offers 120GB of flash (SSD) storage and 1TB of mechanical (HDD) storage.
The need for high storage capacities can be attributed to the increased use of devices such as tablets, digital cameras and smartphones, all of which can be used to conveniently consume and create vast amounts of data. The increased use of multiple computing devices is also driving the adoption of network attached storage (NAS) devices in the region.
These devices allow users to centralize, access and protect data (the latter when the user owns a 2-bay or larger NAS and is running RAID 1 or 5). Modern NAS devices such as the My Cloud family also allow users to access data remotely via free to download apps that are available for computing platforms such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.
Remote data access was previously something only business users were concerned with but today end consumers demand the same level of data access.
Due to the acceptance of cloud storage, do you see physical storage market taking a hit?
Cloud storage has so far witnessed limited acceptance with a large portion of adopters using the service provider’s free trial period on an extended basis. Here, a limited amount of capacity and functionality is made available and beyond this the user tends to turn back to his physical storage devices.
Physical storage is still preferred owing to the comparatively low cost per gigabyte, ease of use and functionality. The growing adoption of NAS devices is a testament to this. On the flip side, as the world’s number one storage provider, WD also offers a wide range of hard drives that are designed for enterprises such as datacenters.
Drives like the WD XE, RE and SE can be found in datacenters around the world and as these datacenters grow to serve customers, be they end users, SMBs or other enterprises, we see increased adoption of our enterprise drives.
How do you, as a company, make sure your products come accompanied with cloud storage and the same time ensure it does not cannibalize your core product portfolio?
WD has a wide range of storage products and solutions and on occasions we even bundle our physical storage products with third party cloud storage. At present we are running a global promotion where anyone who purchases a WD My Cloud EX4 NAS will get 100GB of free cloud backup for a year from ElephantDrive.
We see physical and cloud storage as mutually complementary concepts; a user can store the majority of his or her data on a product like our My Cloud EX4 and, at the same time, can place only the most vital data in the cloud service. So, here, he or she has local data redundancy (assuming the My Cloud EX4 is running RAID 1 or RAID 5), as well as cloud redundancy.
What sort of storage requirements do SMBs in the region have? Do they go for a NAS device or do they plan out a proper storage and recovery policy?
The needs of regional SMBs are on par with the requirements of SMBs in other parts of the world; these organizations look for high storage capacities, remote data access, robust data redundancy and, perhaps most importantly, ease of use.
As a result we are seeing healthy uptake of our SMB focused WD Sentinel DX4000 Small Business Storage Server in the region. This is a NAS that is purpose built for SMBs and provides powerful features and functionality but yet can be setup and configured without the need of an IT expert.
What sort of channel community do you work with in this region? Do you have frequent channel engagements with your partners?
WD has a wide range of partners across the Middle East and Africa for each of its products and solutions. As a company we pride ourselves on building mutually beneficial relationships with partners, wherever they may be.
We frequently engage with partners on a day-to-day basis either face-to-face or via other means and frequently collaborate with partners on activities and events. We also consistently run training sessions to ensure that our partners are fully trained and equipped to deal with any customer query that may arise on our products and, on a broader scale, the segment that the product fits into. In the last quarter alone we conducted nearly a dozen partner training sessions and were able to educate and train over 300 sales-focused individuals.
Do you provide any channel certification programs for your channel partners? Please provide details.
Training and certification is a constant focus for us at WD. With our web based WD University training tool, our channel partners can login and learn about our latest products, take tests and, on passing, can print out their personalized certificates on the spot.
The training tool has proved popular with our partners in the region, and beyond. We’re seeing increased use of the tool by a growing number of partners across the world.
In the coming months we’ll continue delivering the best and most exciting products and solutions to end users, while forging long term, mutually beneficial relationships with new and existing partners.
