New WD Alliances and Strategy

WD, a Western Digital company, announced at the IT Partners show, new partnerships to address the French NAS market.

WD and StorageCraft: protection, storage for businesse
StorageCraft Technology Corporation and WD have joined forces to offer a solution designed to cover businesses saving needs and reduce downtime in case of disaster. This alliance of experts in recovery plans and storage technology allows for an all-in-one solution at a lower cost.

Resellers will also benefit from that partnership with a consistent offering whose obvious advantages can be proved through dedicated training sessions and webinars.

“The presentations we make throughout the year are based on a didactic approach and focus on the components of a recovery plan. We want to prove to the largest audience possible that a DR Plan is easy to build, at a reasonable cost,” said Régis Bonneterre, business manager, WD.

StorageCraft/WD’s solution has one main advantage: it can come and complement the centralized safeguard process – ShadowProtect -, hence allowing data saving and storing on a distant site using the StorageCraft ImageManager software.

WD and TRENDnet: a consistent offering for video surveillance
TRENDnet, Inc. and WD unveiled a partnership aiming at offering performance video surveillance solutions. As an acknowledged expert in video surveillance, TRENDnet can rely on WD and their secure NAS storage solutions optimized for video surveillance applications.

Tested for systems with up to 30 video cameras (WD Sentinel DS5100) and with a maximum capacity of 16TB, the WD/TRENDnet system is an option suitable for businesses looking for video surveillance systems at a fair price.

“This partnership with TRENDnet allows us to market a very attractive offering, fully optimized for video surveillance applications. With its high capacity history of saving sessions – thanks to large storage capacity – and its maximum availability, its redundant battery system and network interfaces, our solution turns out to be perfect for small to medium sized sites», explains Nordine Kherif, senior sales manager, WD.

Built around DX4200 or DS5100/DS6100 WD Sentinel servers, the solution enables movement detection, email alerts for each saving session, remote visualization of video flows using smartphones and tablets, and remote access to stored content.

A booming NAS market
Followingf its My cloud personal cloud solutions launched in 2014 (major leader on the 1 bay NAS segment in Europe), WD extended its product family with My cloud EX2 and My cloud EX4 which both target more professional market segments and advanced users. The range also includes the Sentinel family, storage servers (DX 4000, DX 4200, RX 4100) and small form-factor servers (DS 5100/DS 6100) for SMBs.

SMBs, SOHO users, creative professionals and self-employed users will benefit from scalable solutions offering options for content saving.

My cloud EX2 and EX4 users will also take advantage of the ergonomics and easy setup of the WD Personal cloud solution, that can be accessed via mobile apps for iOS and Android.

“WD aims at becoming the leader of the booming NAS market, which they are familiar with in the wake of the success in 2014 of the WD Red internal HDD for NAS systems“, comments Kalima Toubal, product marketing director, EMEAI. “With a large product portfolio, reliable hardware and software-equipped products, along with strong partnerships with StorageCraft or TRENDnet likewise, we start 2015 on a very positive note. The year ahead is very promising.“

WD attended IT Partners show, February 3-4, 2015 in Disneyland Paris.