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."
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
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
- How to store your headsets and keyboards
- Cornell research shows that underwater 3D printing can be used to build or repair ocean structures in place — DARPA-funded project aims to make underwater const
- $40 million worth of crypto stolen from Step Finance — hackers compromise executives’ devices to gain illicit access
- China’s CXMT and YMTC to increase memory output — two new fabs could close the gap with the ‘big three’
- AMD Radeon RX 9000 GPUs begin to appear in the Steam Hardware Survey at last — RX 9070 arrives with paltry 0.16% market share, less than the GeForce GT 730
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.