A Conversation with Ed Strong
Western Digital is making waves in the
mergers and acquisitions market by
buying Hitachi Global Storage. With the
economy making a rebound, we wanted
to know more about the company and its
plans for the future, so we talked with Ed
Strong, director of Western Digital’s CE
business unit.
Q. Western Digital recently acquired
Hitachi Global Storage.
How will this strengthen your product
offerings, and how will it enhance the
storage business?
A. Acquiring Hitachi Global Storage
Technologies (HGST) is in
step with strengthening WD’s global
strategy. The resulting company will
have the broadest product portfolio
in the industry, providing significant
customer value. During this acquisition
process we cannot discuss specific
details pertaining to what and how it
will enhance our product offerings and
storage business as a whole.
Q. You recently introduced a 6 TB
external hard drive. How will this
affect HD video and photo files, and will
this play a key role in the IP video surveillance
world?
A. The release of our quad interface,
RAID-enabled My Book
Studio II Edition, formatted for Mac,
expands storage capacity up to 6 terabytes,
offering creative professionals
more options for photo and video file
archiving. Complementing the My
Book Studio II, WD offers two external
storage products that are engineered
to attach to 24/7 set-top boxes,
such as surveillance STBs. The first is
My Book AV DVR Expander, available
in a 1 TB capacity point. The other is
My Passport AV, which is available in
a 320-gigabyte capacity. Both products
have AV-Class hard drives inside that
are specifically engineered to run 24/7,
rather than periodically—once a week
or a few times each month—for backup
purposes.
Q. It would seem the past economic
woes are behind you now, especially
with this acquisition. Will you
have other new products to offer this
year, and what is your research and development
team working on?
A. The proposed acquisition with
HGST notwithstanding, WD
has been profitable for more than 10
years and has the strongest balance
sheet in the industry. Suffice it to say,
WD is constantly working on product
innovations to best serve our customers’
ever-changing storage demands
and anticipate future needs, but per
company policy, we are unable to discuss
new product research or development
plans that are in the works.
Q. Can you describe the role Western
Digital plays in the security
industry?
A. One of the most important factors
around data storage for the
security industry is the practice of using
AV-class drives—meaning storage
products that are specifically tested
to run 24/7. WD qualifies its AV-class
hard drives with key security set-top
box builders around the world. As part
of this process, WD’s future products
are designed to ensure industry-leading
reliability and compatibility. WD’s
mission in this space is to educate the
security market on the importance of
integrating with AV-class storage so
that security providers can deliver more
reliable products to their customers as
well as save money due to fewer returns.
With this goal in mind, WD speaks
and presents at security industry trade
shows, advertises in security publications,
and engages with security-centric
distributors and resellers.
Q. What are your three strongest
vertical markets? Do you see any
change in these markets this year and
into 2012?
A. It depends on what part of our
business you are looking at, but
with the expanding role security/surveillance
continues to play throughout
so many different layers of government
and various industries, our portfolio
of AV, solid state and enterprise drives
addresses all of the key verticals, from
commercial facilities to education campuses
to municipalities.
Q. Can you explain the benefit of
solid state drives? How do you
serve as a data recovery partner?
A. With no moving parts and low
power consumption, solid state
drives (SSDs) offer speed, performance
and the ability to endure extremely
harsh environments, given that they are
highly durable and deliver maximum
tolerance for drops, shock and vibration.
SSDs are excellent storage solutions
for certain enterprise and niche
applications. Conversely, traditional
hard disk drives (HDDs) offer greater
capacity options, significantly lower
costs to integrate and an unlimited
number of writes. Thus, depending on
capacity requirements, operating environment
and budgetary factors, both
HDDs and SSDs provide distinctive
technology features and benefits. With
respect to data recovery, WD external
storage products that are AV-qualified
are an ideal solution.
Q. Is it possible to forecast useable
life by eliminating unscheduled
downtime?
A. In many instances, yes. While
traditional storage products
typically run until they fail with no
warning to the user that the end is near
(and resulting failures cause unexpected
downtime and emergency system
maintenance for restoration), it is possible
to forecast useable life and eliminate
unscheduled downtime.
Aside from developing innovations
to prevent failure and increase endurance,
the best method to eliminate
unscheduled downtime is monitoring
technology that can detect drive issues
before they fail. In addition to the
self-monitoring analysis and reporting
technology (SMART) utility feature
used with HDDs, Western Digital developed
the patent-pending SiSMART
technology to monitor SSDs.
The WD SiSMART technology is
the first technology in the industry to
self-monitor solid state storage system
usage and accurately forecast useable
life. SiSMART acts as an early warning
system by constantly monitoring and
reporting the exact amount of remaining
storage system life. Drive usage information
can be requested by the host
at any time and allows for an accurate
prediction of the SSD’s life.
This article originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Security Today.