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Western Digital Unveils New Data Center Storage Solutions

Western Digital WDC recently expanded its data center solutions portfolio. The company announced the new ActiveScale5.3 object storage system, Ultrastar Serv60+8 hybrid storage server platform and new enhancements to its IntelliFlash N Series family.

Emerging applications including the likes of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning (ML) tools call for a robust storage system. With the new solutions, the company attempts to meet these requirements.

The new solutions drive efficiency, improve performance, and optimize the total cost of ownership (“TCO”). The users can effectively access, transform, capture and preserve data in innovative ways.



The new enhancements to its data center storage portfolio are likely to aid the company in reinforcing its market position against the likes of Seagate STX.  Notably, shares of Western Digital have lost 8.3% value in the past year, against the industry’s rally of 30.6%.

Features

ActiveScale Storage System

Western Digital’s new ActiveScale5.3 object storage system can support around 19-nines of data durability. The new cost-effective system supports a “Data Forever” architecture enabling customers to store petabytes (“PB”) of data, consequently improving data center space efficiency.

New enhancements comprise Unified Data Access, a Network File System (“NFS”) interface capabilities, among others to improve storage usage. Furthermore,the Amazon’s AMZN new Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) S3-compatible interface deserves a special mention. The combined features enable the system to deliver 20% greater storage density over existing scale-out or scale-up configurations.

The ActiveScale offering is available and ranges from 864TB raw capacity to 63PB.

IntelliFlash NVMe Flash Arrays

Western Digital’s four new IntelliFlash N-Series systems offer robust performance for broad based enterprise workloads. The series leverage IntelliFlash OS 3.9 in the range of 19TB to 1.3PB of solid-state storage.

Additionally, Version 3.9 provides a comprehensive suite of capabilities comprising data reduction, multiple protocols, automated data healing and data protection. The new Series systems can be availed by users later this year.

Ultrastar Storage Server Platform

With this latest high-capacity storage, Ultrastar Serv60+8 solutions strengthen Western Digital’s foothold in the Software-defined storage (“SDS”) server market. Featuring dual Intel INTC Xeon scalable processors, the storage solution offers improved and enhanced performance and reliability.

The new server platform is available from capacities starting at 144TB among other multiple configurations.

“These new capabilities and offerings further expand our commitment to reducing data center operating costs and delivering higher value to our customers,” said Phil Bullinger, senior vice president and general manager of Western Digital’s Data Center Systems business unit.

Analyzing Market Opportunities

Per ResearchAndMarkets data, the global data center storage market is envisioned to increase at a CAGR of 11.8% from 2018 through 2022. Per MarketsandMarkets report, the non-volatile memory market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 9.5% from 2017 to reach approximately $82 billion by 2022. Per Technavio research report, the global enterprise SSD controller market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of around 26% from 2018 to 2022.

The aforementioned reports reflect robust demand for storage systems across various levels, strengthening the prospects of the newly offered solutions.

Our Take

Western Digital is making continuous efforts to ensure its products deliver high quality storage solutions across all emerging data-driven technologies. We believe this ongoing expansion of its product portfolio bodes well for the top line.

We expect the company to better compete against other storage players in the market with the strengthened portfolio.

Zacks Rank

Western Digital carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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