Interview | Western Digital
Western Digital at GITEX Technology Week 2019 Are you launching any new products or services at this year’s GITEX? As consumers generate more content than ever, Western Digital is creating and delivering innovative solutions to help them capture, share and manage it all. At GITEX Trade Week 2019, we will be showcasing our latest offerings, ranging from SanDisk’s all new 1Tb microSD card, the WD Black P10 gaming drive and WD’s innovative portfolio of internal SSDs, all the way to WD Purple’s broad storage portfolio for security & surveillance and Western Digital’s Ultrastar datacenter drives.
Khwaja Saifuddin Senior Sales Director, ME Western Digital Corporation
What differentiates your company for your competitors? Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. We drive the innovation needed to help the world capture, preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. On your phone, in the cloud, across organizations—everywhere data lives, we’re there to drive the innovation necessary for the best results today and tomorrow. New devices, new systems, new solutions and world-class data infrastructures, all optimized and tuned to create the right conditions for data to realize its full potential. We help the world capture, preserve, access and transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. As a-leader in data center infrastructure, we accept the responsibility to empower people and systems that depend on data.
22 | October 2019
What are the most exciting developments in the Middle East’s technology landscape over the last 12 months? Even as new technologies are developed, innovation around the application of existing technology is rapidly changing how organisations operate. Leaps in computing capacity, data capture and connectivity are accelerating this change. There hasn’t been one single trending technology in 2019, but a bunch of technologies have instead made their presence felt. Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Internet of Things, blockchain and Automation have been the key hot topics for quite some time now. IoT, important one for Western Digital Corporation, is one of the technologies that remain to expand continuously. Understanding and working with different types of data in the IoT ecosystem, where data can be cultivated, is the bread and butter of Western Digital. As always, Western Digital provides pristine and high-endurance IoT solutions in a myriad of commercial industries, which allows management of data and work function to last for a long time. Moreover, the evolution of Edge Data Centers & Software Defined Data Centers with the introduction of 5G and concepts like Mobile Edge Computing. The primary
driver of edge data centers and the need to reduce latency to support a range of applications from autonomous vehicles to artificial intelligence to deep learning to robotic surgery have made a profound impact on the progression of the data centre market and Western Digital is at the forefront to address its needs through its diverse product portfolio. What are your goals and objectives for the remainder of 2019? The volume and complexity of data will only increase. This explosion of data brings with it unprecedented opportunities. Customers are looking for storage solutions that unlock the value of data. Storage technology needs to be geared towards enabling business leaders to make better, more informed and smarter decisions that are backed by not just data but by insights. At Western Digital, we will continue our drive towards developing industry-leading solutions that create an environment where the flow of information leads to smarter decisions, breakthrough discoveries and deeper connections. What do you think are the challenges organizations in the Middle East face in their digital transformation journey? In this digital era, companies across all industries need to embrace new technologies and business methods to stay relevant and ahead of their competition, which means improving their customer interactions and experiences, and therefore unlocking their business models. Commenting on our region specifically, and according to McKinsey, many businesses are interested in digitization, but only a few of them have moved aggressively enough. According to the report by McKinsey, 82% of the region’s population already own smartphones. Surprisingly enough, the progress on digital transformation among companies has been limited.