Mohammed Owais, Sales Director, Middle East, Western Digital talking to Channel Post MEA highlights their long association with the region’s largest safety and security show, Intersec 2023 and how the Western Digital is optimizing technology to offer solutions best suited for video surveillance and smart city applications
How would you describe association with Intersec and why is it important for the company to be part of the show?
We have been part of this exhibition since the second edition of the event, so it goes without saying that Intersec is a very important event for us and we always look forward to this event, where we can highlight what we offer when it comes to storage. Smart Video today has become a very big part of our business. This is due to smart cities, data analytics, and other solutions that are built around storage.
What products or solutions did you exhibited during the show?
On display was Western Digital’s new 22TB* range of WD Purple hard disk drives (HDDs), engineered specifically for smart video and includes three product solutions: WD Purple Pro HDD, WD Purple HDD and WD Purple microSD card. Moreover, the company showcased its industry-leading Ultrastar DC HC570 22TB CMR hard drives to support cloud service providers (CSPs), video surveillance as a service (VSaaS) providers, telcos and system integrators.
Finally, on display were the live demonstration of its storage platform system, the Ultrastar Data102, addressing the demanding storage needs of large enterprise customers, storage OEMs, cloud service providers, as well as resellers/integrators requiring dense, shared HDD.
Which are the major trends influencing the video surveillance market in the Middle East?
Governments across the Middle East are cementing digital transformation at the forefront of their 2030 visions and their future plans. This pushed companies, organizations, and government entities to install video surveillance devices across the past few years for security, traffic management amongst other things. We are also observing a higher focus on speeding up how AI and Data are accelerating smart cities or helping employees return to work safely. These are all trends that are shaping the market and pushing us at Western Digital’s to offer users optimized solutions and allow them to capture, store and analyze their surveillance data.
How do your offerings enable organisations to enhance their security preparedness?
The smart video industry requires high capacity, high performance and high endurance data storage with minimal or pre-emptive maintenance.
Our 22TB WD Purple Pro CMR HDD with OptiNAND technology delivers big capacity to address the latest surveillance trends, in a purpose-built enterprise-class drive supporting video analytics servers, and AI and deep-learning systems. The drive features Western Digital’s exclusive AllFrame AI technology that supports AI streams for deep-learning analytics within the system while helping to reduce dropped frames.
The WD Purple Pro drives are optimized to handle up to 64 single-stream HD cameras as well as many of the latest smart cameras that transmit multiple streams. It offers high reliability with a MTBF of up to 2.5 million hours for advanced smart video solutions that operate in 24/7 environments. The 22TB WD Purple Pro HDD is also equipped with energy-assisted PMR (ePMR), triple-stage actuator (TSA) and HelioSeal to deliver the industry’s highest areal density at 2.2TB per platter, delivering 22TB CMR HDDs for its customers.
The WD Purple HDDs are engineered specifically for surveillance to help withstand the elevated heat fluctuations and equipment vibrations within NVR environments. An average desktop drive is built to run for only short intervals, not the harsh 24/7 always-on environment of a high-definition surveillance system. With WD Purple, you get reliable, surveillance-class storage that’s tested for compatibility in a wide range of security systems. Exclusive AllFrame technology helps reduce frame loss and improve overall video playback
How do you enable your channel partners?
We train our channel partners through our myWD Training program on the features and benefits of our products and solutions. This provides our partners with the skills needed to directly interact with customers. What’s more, we provide extensive training across our partner ecosystem – from distributor account managers to reseller sales staff – so that we ensure that everyone is aligned with the right positioning for a product line and identifying the right product for a specific customer’s needs. Getting the right products improves customer satisfaction, increases repeat business, and builds the Western Digital brand – we all benefit, because our partner’s success is our success.
For example, the myWD Partner Program is created for VARs, system integrators, solution providers and managed service providers who sell storage drives, NAS and surveillance solutions. The program offers a comprehensive line up of benefits including direct incentives, member-only promotions and exclusive access to a rich set of marketing tools.
Additionally, the Western Digital Enterprise Partner Program (EPP) is a dedicated high-touch program focused on leveraging joint resources for mutually beneficial relationships. The program provides key partner resources such as dedicated local sales, engineering and marketing, joint development of go-to-market plans, exclusive access to customer intelligence tools and more.
With its unwavering commitment to the channel, Western Digital has tripled the size of its enterprise partner team and added a field partner marketing division to drive joint marketing initiatives and nation-wide brand awareness campaigns, including digital marketing, activities, and regional events.
