Speak about the latest products of Western Digital for enterprise customers

At Western Digital we are constantly working to help address the capacity and analytical needs of the industry, as well as support the evolving economics of data centers, NAS, and smart video customers for decades to come. Our newly introduced 22TB drives are built to help our customers efficiently store and access huge volumes of data while offering cost efficiencies and low TCO. We offer the world’s first 22TB CMR HDDs, which are now available in the region. Western Digital WD Gold is the preferred choice for IT/data center channel customers.

Describe the competencies of WD’s SSDs than that of its competitors

Western Digital has launched a new family of high-capacity SSDs to give cloud customers the ability to manage, scale, and provision infrastructures with high-capacity, low TCO, and better QoS consistency. This allows them to provide flexible cloud services that can adapt and scale to the changing demands of the digital world around us.

• The new Ultrastar DC SN650 NVMe SSD family includes a 2.5-inch form-factor for traditional infrastructure and the slimmer, ruler E1.L form-factor, both with capacities up to 15.36TB
• The Ultrastar DC SN640 NVMe SSD is a mainstream NVMe SSD targeting broad deployment as boot, caching, or primary storage in data center IT and cloud environments.
• Ultrastar DC SN840 extends Western Digital’s leadership in dual-port architecture by vertically integrating proven flash controllers. Dual-port high availability supports two redundant paths to the SSD and is critical to ensuring access to data in the event of a failure in the data path.

Are you planning to present products or solutions at the GITEX Technology Week? If so, which are they?

Western Digital will have our range of data solutions available from WD, SanDisk, and WD_BLACK, as well as our more recently launched products which include:

• The new 22TB CMR HDDs
• The WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD

Moreover, we will be displaying our latest range of premium storage solutions under the SanDisk Professional portfolio designed to empower professional content creators around the world. The range of products promises to deliver scalable, high-performance, reliable solutions across industries globally.

Discuss WD’s prospective regional plans for the remainder of 2022 and strategies for 2023.

WD has over two decades of presence in the local market, and in that time we have established on-ground teams, made extensive local investments, and aligned our offerings with our reseller partners and distributors. WD understands that the next few years will be an exciting time for smart technology providers in the Middle East. The market is growing, and consumers are excited about what’s coming next, but a lack of knowledge around smart technology infrastructure threatens this progress and the gains that will go with it.

We are prepared to support the growing digital needs of companies and consumers with specialized storage solutions to create optimum value from IoT data, which must be considered when building out the wider data infrastructure.

The company plans to mass-produce the T-FORCE CARDEA series’ PCIe Gen5 SSD in 2022 Q3, and will also launch a variety of efficient cooling solutions for the PCIe Gen5 SSD.

Speak about the merits of WD’s data center platforms and drives in the business-centric market

Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. As a leader in data infrastructure, the company is driving the innovation needed to help customers capture, preserve, access, and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. Everywhere data lives, from advanced data centers to mobile sensors to personal devices, our industry-leading solutions deliver the possibilities of data. Western Digital data-centric solutions are comprised of the Western Digital, SanDisk, and WD brands.

Innovation has always fuelled and nurtured growth at Western Digital. It is as important now, as any time in our history. Western Digital has long been at the forefront of game-changing innovations. From the invention of the first hard drive to recent advancements in 3D NAND our journey of innovation continues to inspire those who dare to think big about the possibilities of data.

Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director, Middle East, WD

Western Digital participates in multiple collaborations with external organizations to provide Western Digital access to resources and knowledge that can be applied to improving current products and developing new technologies or products, and generate value from the data stored on our devices. It is the efforts and the direction of our esteemed global management that drive our competitive edge and continued success in the market.

What sorts of concentration and association WD has with SMEs and large enterprises? Briefly explain the product line you have for them

Robust storage solutions are needed for the rising needs of businesses and consumers. Western Digital offers a portfolio of products, covering a range of market segments, created to enable customers to derive valuable insights and intelligence from data.

WD Ultrastar for businesses: An enterprise-grade drive, designed for cloud service providers, telcos, and system integrators. The Ultrastar Edge servers are easy to transport, deploy and scale in the field, at co-location (colo) facilities, factories, or in remote data centers. It delivers blazing speed and capacity for real-time analytics, AI, deep learning, ML training and inference, and video transcoding at the edge.

WD Gold NVMe SSDs: It improves system responsiveness and boosts productivity while lowering overall TCO. Enterprise teams can work with confidence knowing they have power loss protection and the ability to stop anyone from accessing sensitive data by eliminating it with fast and effective secure erase technology. It is available in a range of capacities to meet a business’ specific needs. WD Gold NVMe SSDs can work alone or perfectly complement WD Gold HDDs and other HDDs to handle tough workloads with endurance businesses can trust.

Give us an insight into the features of WD’s newest SSDs released to the market

If we’re looking at SSD’s that support SMBs, then we must talk about NAS – network-attached storage – as it’s one of the most widely used methods for accessing, sharing, and protecting data alongside the cloud. NAS solutions help SMBs solve for latency and remote shared access to data or applications across the network.

Leveraging our strength and leadership in a flash, we recently announced our new WD Red SN700 NVMe SSD, a high-endurance, a fast-caching solution that accelerates NAS performance for SMB customers.

This powerful new drive is engineered to support 24/7 NAS environments and always-on applications with the ultimate in reliability and endurance. Its fast system responsiveness and I/O performance are perfect for multi-user, multi-application environments, letting SMBs tame their toughest projects from virtualization to collaborative editing to intensive database storage.

Given the need for robust systems that are efficient and intuitive to manage, and in many cases, they need some sort of infrastructure on-premises. A NAS solution can benefit SMBs of all sizes, providing the performance, capacity, and reliability they need.

Are you planning to present products or solutions at the GITEX Technology Week? If so, which are they?

At GITEX, we are keeping a pulse on current data trends with a showcase of products to meet the needs of today’s businesses. As a leader in data infrastructure, Western Digital is driving the innovation needed to help customers capture, preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. Everywhere data lives, from advanced data centers to mobile sensors to personal devices, our industry-leading solutions deliver the possibilities of data. At GITEX, you will find Western Digital data-centric solutions, comprised of the Western Digital, SanDisk, and WD brands. Each brand offers a range of capacities to meet a business’s specific needs.

How do you evaluate WD’s business prospects for the next two years, in terms of expansion, growth, tie-ups, etc.?

As the market leader, we know we have a responsibility to our consumers to stay ahead of the competition. And we do this through strategic collaborations, innovations, and actively listening to our customers.

Whether in your pocket, home, car, or the cloud, it’s likely Western Digital is with you every step of the way. It’s a responsibility we don’t take lightly. That’s why we are always at the cusp of innovation, pushing the boundaries of technology to make what you thought was once impossible, possible.

Western Digital understands that the next few years will be an exciting time for smart technology providers in the middle east. The market is growing, and consumers are excited for what’s coming next, but a lack of knowledge around smart technology infrastructure threatens this progress and the gains that will go with it.

As various technologies continue to evolve so will the data storage needs and how to get the best value from it. Western Digital is prepared to support the growing digital needs of companies and consumers with specialized storage solutions to create optimum value from IoT data, which must be considered when building out the wider data infrastructure.

Give us some insights into the NVIDIA Data Center solutions PNY launched recently

PNY provides the most comprehensive computing, storage, and networking portfolio for data centers. Its vast expertise and experience enable to support the challenges of the data center coming from a broad range of industries such as healthcare, retail, higher education, and more.

PNY offers the NVIDIA DGX A100 AI Infrastructure based on the NVIDIA A100 GPU architecture, one universal building block for the AI data center for enterprise at scale, allowing to build DGX PODs and SuperPODs, a complete, cloud-native AI data center with limitless capacity. In this environment, PNY proposes different storage solutions dedicated to data centers, and AI, coming from strong partners such as NetApp or DDN, or the PNY in-house storage server PNY 3S.

Talus Arukalil, Regional Manager – MEAI

Finally, PNY recently signed a direct distribution agreement with NVIDIA Mellanox Networking solutions and offers a complete Infiniband and Ethernet networking portfolio to orchestrate the compute and storage of the data center: SmartNICS, switches, cables, and more.

How does the operational paradigm get shifted via GPU solutions?

Three converging forces have sparked the AI era: the availability of huge databases, the invention of Deep Learning algorithms, and the unprecedented performance of GPU computing.

For 30 years, the principles of Moore’s Law have been authoritative as microprocessor performance increased by 50% per year. Now, the physical limitations of semiconductors mean that CPU performance is only increasing by 10% each year. By popularizing GPU processing, NVIDIA has provided a new path for the entire industry and will deliver up to 1000 times faster computing performance by 2025. GPU computing is the most effective way to improve the performance of HPC applications and data centers.

Tell us about the strength PNY amasses in the IT component industry and what are your signature products?

PNY managing the market in three segments. Consumer components ecosystem group focusing on gamers and system integrators with Nvidia GeForce GPUs, SSD, and DRAM modules. Next one, the Nvidia Professional solutions group targeting business development with enterprise-level end users, workstation builders, SI partners, etc with Quadro, Tesla cards, Nvidia DGX systems, and networking solutions. The third group is focusing on removable storage products for the retail consumer market with USB drives, memory cards, portable SSD, etc.

Speak a bit about PNY’s dominance in the consumer market with its graphic cards

Our range of components is our strength and uniqueness. GPU availability is very limited in recent times and we have challenges to fulfill the market demand. However, we are trying our best to provide maximum allocations to our traditional partners. PNY being Nvidia partner for consumer and professional Quadro cards we can provide more GPUs to market compared to competitions focusing on GeForce only.

How’s PNY’s performance and market share in the MENA region and compare them with other regions?

Globally US & EU are large markets for PNY since we operate in those regions for more than 30 years. Middle east operation launched in 2016 and we are in the growth phase. We are lucky to have many leading broad line/specialists partners joining our network to strengthen market reach.

The Consumer SSD market is highly competitive. How does PNY differentiate itself from others?

The flash-based memory market is volatile and price-sensitive in general. In 1985 PNY opened the business with the DRAM module as the first product. Since then we have had the expertise to handle all formats of memory (USB drives/cards/DRAM all range/SSD full range). Many PC applications are switching from HDD to SSD and now Playstation also announced an upgrade option with NVME SSD with a speed of 5500 MB/s and above. PNY SSD range includes basic 2.5” till CS3140 NVME with high performance up to 7500 MB/s which is one of the fastest in the industry.

Briefly tell us about PNY’s expansion plans in the region and new technology introductions?

The demand for IT technology is growing strong in most markets is the positive part. As all know the pandemic period accelerated the importance of technology. We are looking forward to expanding more to larger upcoming regions such as Africa and Central Asian countries.

PNY is a global partner to Nvidia and we are committed to bringing all the latest launches to the region along with more range of SSD and DRAM is the plan for Q4 2021.

For creators seeking an SSD that is compatible with a variety of interfaces and platforms and can transfer large files at high speeds, the T-CREATE CLASSIC Thunderbolt3 External SSD with its multi-interface support meets all the criteria. The SSD features a single Type C connector that supports Thunderbolt3 and 4, as well as USB3.2 Gen2 interfaces. The SSD devices are also fully compatible with Mac OS and Windows systems, allowing creators to present their work without worrying about restrictions on different operating systems when they are out making proposals and accessing their data. This single SSD supports multiple mainstream interfaces and platforms, making file transfers between machines effortless and providing creators unprecedented freedom and convenience.

The CLASSIC Thunderbolt3 External SSD can reach speeds of up to 900 MB/s when using the USB interface. The manufacturer claims, “In just 15 seconds, it can transfer up to 25GB of multimedia files. The SSD’s glacier silver aluminum heatsink has a classic and elegant design, providing high durability and excellent cooling purposes during high-speed data transfers. Also, the largest capacity version (4TB) meets the needs of a wide variety of creators.

Team Group also revealed a new product under the series equipped with patented ultra-thin graphene heat sinks, the T-FORCE CARDEA Z44L PCIe4.0 SSD, bringing a new force of PCIe 4.0 to the gaming storage market. The CARDEA Z44L comes with a super-thin graphene heat sink containing multiple patented technologies that improve heat dissipation by up to 9%. Built with materials for thermal conductivity, it gives gamers excellent flexibility for their builds and is fully compatible with all motherboard heat sinks. The CARDEA Z44L supports the latest PCIe Gen 4×4 interface and can deliver read/write speeds of up to 3500/3000 MB/s. Both products hit the market by the end of September 2021.

Key Product Specifications:

• High-speed data transfer
• Multi-interface support
• advanced cooling technology
• Supports Thunderbolt3 and 4 and USB3.2 Gen2 interfaces