Western Digital, a world leader in storage solutions, is witnessing good response to WD Purple drives, its latest offering to the market.

Demand is coming from leading public and private sector organisations as the requirements for surveillance systems is evolving beyond monitoring to offering real time, quality video for analysis and insights, according to Khwaja Saifuddin, senior director, components division, India, Middle East and Africa.

“WD Purple hard drives are high-definition surveillance systems engineered for 24/7 always-on.

Featuring IntelliSeek and AllFrame technologies, the WD Purple surveillance-class drive delivers premium reliability and peace-of-mind for home and business surveillance systems,” he said.

WD Purple Surveillance Storage offers a number of benefits to end users.

“If the storage drive hasn’t been designed for constant, never-ending read/write operations, it won’t be able to keep up,” said Saifuddin. He further said: “Some drives, like WD’s Purple surveillance-class hard drive family, include special technology (called AllFrame in this case) that improves playback performance and works with ATA streaming to reduce errors and frame loss.”

In addition, the drive is Raid (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk capabilities)-enabled. A drive with this capability can use two or more hard disks to create a safety net for failed hardware by ensuring that the image is still being captured even if one drive isn’t working. This lessens interruptions in productivity and decreases the chances of data loss.

It also consumes less power. “While low power consumption might not be first on one’s list of things to look for in a hard drive, the need for always-on capability makes this crucial. Having a drive that calculates the optimum seek speeds won’t generate as much heat, even in passively-cooled storage enclosures, making it more reliable and friendlier to your customer’s wallet,” he said.

Some other features include high camera count support;  high system bay count support – the right drive will include hardware vibration sensors to enable higher drive count systems as well as higher system and hard drive workloads; extensive compatibility with cameras;  rugged exterior – in some cases the drive may need to live and perform continuously in harsh environments. It comes with tarnish-resistant PCBA protection.

It is also easily upgradable.

THE MARKET

Saifuddin: enthusiastic about prospects

Keeping in mind the growing digitisation in the region, the Middle East is a very strategic market for Western Digital. The region’s digital market was expected to reach $35 billion (Dh128 billion) in 2015, according to global consultancy firm Strategy&.

“In the region, we have the entire global array of products, ranging from WD Red (the industry’s leading NAS solution), WD Blue (the ideal storage solution for everyday users of PCs), WD Black (high-performance hard drives geared towards gamers and professionals) and WD Purple (surveillance storage solutions) to WD My Passport (the world’s best-selling external hard drive) and My Cloud EX2, which specialises in storage for businesses. We also have regular product enhancements and upgrades that we bring to the region to improve user experience and provide the latest available technology to our consumers in the Middle East.”

WD Blue and WD Purple are the region’s favourites, according to Saifuddin. WD Blue is the ideal storage solution for everyday PC users, powering efficient performance. Available in a range of capacities, WD Blue enables users to easily store content produced by the newest technology, such as high-definition cameras.

“We have had a physical presence in the region for 19 years, with our regional head office based at Dubai Silicon Oasis. From this office, we manage our operations in the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and the Indian Subcontinent. We have a strong presence in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and South Africa, as well as fully-fledged operations for the local market in India,” noted Saifuddin.

OUTLOOK

“The outlook for our company looks extremely positive. This is based on our performance in 2015. For the 2015 fiscal year, the company achieved revenues of $14.6 billion and net income of $1.5 billion, in the face of a challenging PC market. With the trends in data storage and cloud computing, we anticipate healthy growth for 2016.”

The company plans to capitalise on the growing opportunities in the region, in line with the trends currently being observed.

As data is generated in ever-increasing amounts, a substantial portion of personal and business computing is migrating to the cloud. This trend is set to define the future and is already picking up now.

“The lucrative surveillance market will prove to be highly beneficial for our WD Purple series. As increasing volumes of data are created, the demand for high-storage capacity will increase. To accommodate this exponential data storage demand, new technology and devices such as cloud storage, personal cloud services, and other sophisticated storage solutions for faster storage and data retrieval, and better storage capacity will see more popularity. We can already see increasing adoption of the My Cloud series and are confident that this sustained growth will only grow in the years to come.

We are looking at a huge opportunity for the storage market this year,” Saifuddin remarked.

“The region is witnessing significant progress across various smart city campaigns and initiatives, founded on the basic necessity of installing effective CCTV surveillance and monitoring solutions to achieve the vision of creating intelligence driven cities and communities. According to 6Wresearch, increasing demand for security cameras will push the surveillance market in the UAE to $197.8 million by 2021,” Saifuddin continued.  

“A core mandate for CCTV surveillance is to enable faster, real time retrieval and analysis of data to enable everything from better community safety as well as effectively manage traffic management, accident and emergency response in addition to urban development and planning. 

“At the same time, we are witnessing a shift from traditional analogue-based CCTV solutions to digital, IP-based solutions. These systems feature HD cameras and are able to capture footage in high resolution, making it easier to identify critical details when reviewing footage.”