As a consequence, while these cloud and enterprise organizations increasingly operate storage pools totaling hundreds of petabytes, they still rely on manual integration, long qualification cycles, and fragmented storage tiers. To help its partners, Western Digital's new intelligent storage platform software abstracts complexity of large-scale storage environments and exposes them as programmable infrastructure. The goal is not to replace existing architectures, but to overlay them with automation and management capabilities that simplifies integration and accelerates time-to-production.
This new platform is designed to support the entire Western Digital portfolio, including SSDs, high-performance/high-capacity ePMR and HAMR-based HDDs, and ultra-high capacity SMR and UltraSMR hard drives. Using a common software framework will make it easier for cloud and enterprise customers to adopt new technologies that were otherwise hard or risky for them to use, including the latest and upcoming HDD platforms.
For obvious reasons, such a software layer locks customers with Western Digital and makes it far less appealing for them to adopt drives from rivals Seagate or Toshiba.
"WD's Innovation Day revealed a company that has genuinely transformed its strategy around customer infrastructure needs," said Ed Burns, HDD Research Director at IDC. "The market validation is already evident – customers are deploying these solutions because WD is solving what matters most for AI infrastructure: reliable capacity at scale, performance that meets demanding workloads, and economics that enable profitability. This customer-centric approach, combined with operational discipline positions WD well in the market going forward."
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Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/western-digital-reveals-new-software-platform-to-manage-hundreds-of-petabytes-of-storage-as-yet-unnamed-tool-gives-users-powerful-management-capabilities-at-the-price-of-lock-in#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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