Khwaja Saifuddin
Senior Director – South Asia, Middle East and Africa, WD
As the cloud storage is becoming a popular medium of data storage, the products of hard drive players like WD, a Western Digital company, have also undergone an evolution.
Speaking to channeltimes, Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Director – South Asia, Middle East and Africa, WD talks about the product enhancement and trends in the storage devices. Excerpts.
CT:How Internet of Things is becoming a focus area for WD. What are the opportunities you see in this segment, especially in the context of smart cities?
Saifuddin: Gartner predicts that the number of IOT devices (excluding PCs, tablets and smartphones) will grow from just 0.9 billion in 2009 to about 26 billion units in 2020. It will be an era of interconnected devices talking to each other, sensors sensing and passing on the information to other devices in the network resulting in actions and massive data being saved and applications being run from the operational control centres. Two important aspects of IoT will be network connectivity and central cloud-based storage. No matter what size, all datacenters have one thing in common — they depend on reliable, always-ready data storage — and that’s exactly what WD’s datacenter capacity storage portfolio has been built to deliver.
Smart cities also connect safer cities by means of more surveillance systems capturing the safety of the citizens and any unfortunate occurrences. Our surveillance drives, WD Purple, WD Re and the recently launched WD Purple NV are ideal for 24X7 on, high-fluctuation and temperature, surveillance environments.
We are in touch with consultants, architects, designers, local bodies, state government and central government, to make them understand the importance of reliable and scalable storage. A major chunk of the Government’s expenditure on technology will be on efficient and reliable digital storage infrastructure.
Smart cities will usher in an era of smart homes with wi-fi connectivity, interconnected gadgets, and centralized personal cloud storage solutions. Our content solutions, NAS products, media players, wireless drives empower people to easily save, backup, share and experience their content on multiple devices.
CT: What has been the growth of hard drive market in India? What are the new trends that you see for its growth?
Saifuddin: There has been a remarkable growth in the overall hard drive market in India. Every hard drive serves a purpose and now consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the kind of storage they require for a specific need. Mobility is also a growing trend as smartphones have become almost ubiquitous these days. With people increasing spending hours on their smartphone devices, they need solutions that can connect with their smartphones and allow them access to their personal data such as movies, songs, pictures etc. Network-attached content solutions such as My Cloud and My Passport Wireless allow consumers to expand the storage capacities of their mobile devices.
Another important area is the after-sales service and support. Customers are increasingly demanding hassle-free warranty and replacement services and we try our best to deliver what our customers expect from us.
CT: How important is online channel for WD, how are you ensuring the MOP of products in online and offline channel, and safeguarding the interest of your traditional partners
Saifuddin: Online and offline channels, both are very important for us. There are consumers who prefer to shop online and there are those who will only buy after product demonstration and ample consultation from a reseller. In India, we currently have more than 4300 myWD partners and the number has been steadily growing. This is due to the fact that we believe in safeguarding the interests of our channel partners so they can be more than just traders for us. We have always believed in empowering them so they can efficiently cater to the varied needs of the market. This involves educating, training and addressing their concerns on a regular basis.
CT: What is going to be the focus areas for WD in the next 2-3 years, and how are you going to achieve it?
Saifuddin: Our core strategy is to provide purpose-built, reliable storage solutions. Keeping in view the change in the way people are creating and consuming data, our products have also undergone an evolution. For instance, as mobility and data access on-the-go has increased considerably, WD developed personal cloud storage devices, which allows users to keep their data secure, delivers on their need of data access while on the move and is much more affordable than public cloud. Additionally, with consumers moving towards a wireless world, we came up with My Passport Wireless, which is a Wi-Fi enabled storage drive that allows consumers to save, access and share stored content wirelessly with any smartphone, tablet, computer or other device. Going forward, we will continue to introduce products and innovations in the areas of personal cloud, mobility, and higher capacities.
CT: What has been the key channel related activities in last one year?
Saifuddin: We value our relationship with our partners. We consistently work towards fostering mutually-beneficial relationships with them, which are beyond monetary perks. We organize training programs for channel partners all over the country. We conduct ‘WD Eureka’ to visit our channel partners at their doorsteps and educate them on our solutions in a fun-filled manner. ‘WD Ki Paathshaala’ consists of regular training sessions with our channel partners to apprise them of our existing and new offerings. ‘WDpedia’ helps to initiate and grow relationships with relatively new channel partners in the upcountry markets and provide them direct access to the company.
We recently refreshed our myWD and WD University interfaces and made them much more user friendly. WD University is a library of training material and necessary information required to offer effective solution counselling. WD partners and resellers can sign up for the available courses and complete various training. We keep running promotional contests and offers from time to time for our channel partners to keep them engaged and more participative. Our partners represent us before our customers and it is important that they are conversant with not only our products and their features but also our brand ethos so they can offer optimal solutions.
CT: What have been the technological advancements WD has made in its hard drives?
Saifuddin: We have made technological improvements in the capacity, size, performance, connectivity, and power requirements of storage devices and will continue to do that. Hence, our storage devices continue to meet the demand for higher density and higher performance storage in increasingly diverse applications.
We will continue to make innovations that complement the digital transformation that the country is witnessing. We currently offer a variety of HDD form factors (from 5 to 25 mm thickness) to facilitate integration into very wide range of computing platforms. Going forward, the challenge and opportunity is to capture data that is being stored on mobility devices that HDDs do not integrate into. Fortunately the clouds (both public and personal) where data from these devices are stored are powered by HDDs.
CT: What is the response do you see coming from your cloud storage solutions?
Saifuddin: There has been a growing demand for security, privacy and accessibility of data while travelling. Therefore there is a growing interest towards personal cloud solutions from consumers as well as SMBs and SOHOs as well. Furthermore, our personal cloud solutions come with only an initial cost and save the recurring fees that accompany a public cloud. Personal cloud solutions also provide users with the added security of having complete control of their data. The password protection features assures them that they can store their data without any security threat to it.
CT: Going forward what are the verticals that will be the major contributor towards your top-line?
Saifuddin: Due to the continuous generation of data, the need and subsequently the demand for storage can be seen across verticals and sectors. The storage requirements however, differ according to the amount of data that each segment generates. For example, due to the need to digitally file and store large documents and records, the Banking and Finance industries would require large amounts of storage space. Additionally, the security industry would require specialized surveillance drives to store data. We also expect demand being generated from public cloud companies and enterprise datacenters.
CT: How do you see the uptake of hard drives and SSDs picking up in the market?
Saifuddin: An IDC report suggests that the digital universe in India is nearly doubling in size every two years and will multiply nine times between 2013 and 2020. Naturally, there will be more pronounced demand for high-capacity, reliable storage. Due to the fast speeds of SSDs, they have become popular with the customers. However, due to the higher costs of SSDs compared to HDDs, they are yet to see more progress in the market.