Unisplendour (51%) and Western Digital (49%) Joint Venture: Unis-WDC Storage

Western Digital Corp. and Unisplendour Corporation Limited (Unis), part of China’s Tsinghua Unigroup, under Unigroup celebrated the anticipated launch of their previously announced joint venture, which will be called Unis-WDC Storage Co., Ltd. (UNIS WDC).

The new company is owned 51% by Unis and 49% by Western Digital.

It will market and sell Western Digital’s data center storage systems, including its HGST Active Archive system, in China.

The joint venture company will also invest in the development of new products and enhancements to Western Digital’s products to create solutions that address the evolving needs of the big data market in China.

UNIS WDC will maintain corporate HQs and R&D operations in Nanjing and a sales and marketing office in Beijing.

It hosted a celebratory event at Nanjing Dongjiao State Guest House. Guests include Xie Zhicheng, deputy mayor, Nanjing; Weiguo Zhao, chairman, Tsinghua Unigroup; Steve Milligan, CEO, Western Digital; and Qi Lian, chief president, Tsinghua Unigroup. Zhang Lei, who has been identified to serve as chairman, UNIS WDC; and Gary Miao, who has been identified to become CEO of UNIS WDC.

‘Independent innovation + international cooperation’
Adhering to China’s development principle of ‘independent innovation + international cooperation,’ UNIS WDC will aim to become ‘the strategic partner to China’s big data industry.’

UNIS WDC is a critical part of Unigroup in its industry coverage ‘from chip to cloud.’

By combining the R&D, design, production and market promotion of Unigroup and Western Digital, UNIS WDC will offer customized big storage solutions for the China market.

Unisplendour Corporation Limited of Unigroup holds a majority of the shares of UNIS WDC. Unigroup is focused on expanding its capabilities across core areas of the information technology industry, including semiconductors, mobile interconnect, cloud computing and cloud services.

“As a Chinese enterprise, Unigroup is focused on executing its information technology development strategy, of which UNIS WDC is a critical part. UNIS WDC will adhere to the concept of independent innovation and international cooperation to drive new applications for big storage in government and local industries. It will focus on storage, analytics, security and privacy protection to improve and expand the big data industry ecosystem in China,” said Zhao.

Western Digital is the foreign investor of UNIS WDC. The company’s storage solutions that provide customers with capacity, flexibility and speed are at the heart of many of large data centers and embedded in smartphones, tablets and PCs.

Western Digital completed the acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies in March 2012. The combination created the largest HDD drive company with technology capability and broad product portfolio.

In May of 2016, Western Digital acquired SanDisk Corporation to accelerate its expansion in flash storage.

“As Western Digital continues to expand our investments in high-growth markets such as China, partnerships with growth-oriented companies, such as Unisplendour Corporation, and local governments are critically important,” said Milligan. “When launched later this year, UNIS WDC will deliver advanced datacenter storage solutions to customers in this dynamic market.”

Strategic partner to China’s big data industry
According to IDC, global data generation is estimated to be doubling approximately every two years. In addition, organizations focused on leveraging the huge data sets they manage with advanced big data computing and analytical technologies, which are estimated to represent a $32.4 billion market, growing at 27% annually. IDC believes the storage market as a part of big data will experience 53% annual growth.

UNIS WDC is designed to help organizations manage the volume, velocity and variety of data that is transforming the IT landscape and supporting storage ecosystem.

Big data has become a driving force for social development and industry progress. As information technology continues to develop, the demand for big storage and applications across all industries has become increasingly important. China has established a national information industry development strategy outline for the next ten years to build advanced core technical systems and accelerate progress in targeted areas, including storage.

UNIS WDC will work with Chinese enterprises to customize big storage solutions that deliver business advantages for customers in industries, including financial services, media and entertainment, astronomy and meteorology, telecommunications, genetic science and healthcare.

“UNIS WDC aims to become the leader in comprehensive, secure and controllable core big storage technologies. We will practice the ‘ingenious R&D’ concept, focusing on data reliability and maximizing data security for our customers. UNIS WDC will deliver innovation and optimization by following the standardization principle. By leveraging existing, leading resources, the company will offer data service solutions tailored to meet the needs of the China market. We will work with partners to build a win-win ecosystem and help drive innovation and growth of the big data industry in China. Create the future with data,” said Miao.

Unisplendour Corporation Limited is dedicated to research, development, production, sales and service of IT products and solutions. Centered by its ‘cloud-network-endpoint’ strategy, its business covered a range from servers, storage, networking equipment to IT service, application development and system integration, and is expanding to cloud computing, mobile Internet and big data processing.

Read also:
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