Mohammed Owais Husainali, the Sales Director at Western Digital, speaks about his company’s participation at Intersec 2023, the role storage devices play today and his company’s channel initiatives

Can you tell us about your participation at Intersec 2023?
Intersec is a very important event for us. We have been part of this exhibition since the second edition of the event. We always look forward to events that have anything to do with storage. We always look at opportunities where we can expand. So surveillance today has become a very big part of our business. This is due to smart cities, data analytics, and other solutions that are built around storage.

We have been sort of flag bearers in the surveillance category. This is because if you go to the market, and ask for a surveillance hard drive, sellers will recommend a WD purple drive. So storage for surveillance systems has become synonymous with our purple drives.

At the event this year, we launched our 22 TB hard disk drive. This capacity is being offered in all color models of our products such as gold, red, and purple, in addition to launching it in the Ultra Star series.

Our aim is to offer more storage capacity at a lower cost of ownership. We are also showcasing our micro SD card which is used in wireless security cameras, in addition to displaying our JBOD (just a bunch of disks) solutions, which is a high-end data storage device.

Is using desktop drives for surveillance solutions still in practice?
People used to use such drives to save costs. So a few years ago, we went to assess the needs of customers. So, a desktop drive is built to be used only for about eight hours a day for computing. The purple drive for surveillance, on the other hand, is tested in a 24×7 environment.

So, we went and educated customers on the right drive for the right solution. Education is a continuous process, and so we try to reemphasise that.

Does storage play a bigger role today in terms of data, compared with a couple of years ago?
Of course. Data creation is increasing at a fast pace and you need some place to securely store it. Even in cloud computing, data is stored somewhere at some data center, which uses the hardware we offer. According to the data we have, over 40% of the world’s data is stored on devices from our company.

What sort of demand do you see for storage devices and solutions from regional data centers?
We see a huge demand. If regional governments run initiatives and policies around how regional users’ data is stored and handled, then companies and data centers will have to adhere to them. There are lots of opportunities we see right now.

Do you have any initiatives for your channel community moving forward?
We have a company that has always been aligned with the channel. A lot of our success is attributed to the relationship we have with the channel. We have a myWD program which has been very popular with our channel community. Every year we revisit and refresh it, so there is always something new each time, in order to enhance the overall program. When it comes to the program’s offerings, it’s not only a rebate program. It is also a program that imparts training to the IT guys. We also offer tailored training programs for the channel’s sales guys and for the owners of the company.