Company to resell StorReduce software with its ActiveScale™ object storage system, delivering a more efficient data protection solution compared to traditional backup appliances

Creating environments for data to thrive, Western Digital^® Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced that it is relieving big data pressures on IT managers by offering enterprises a cost-effective and scalable backup and recovery solution for on-premises and hybrid cloud environments. Two powerful technologies, ActiveScale object storage system and StorReduce deduplication software, provide petabyte-scale storage that protects data efficiently, and facilitates a data forever architecture, saving companies up to 70%¹ compared to traditional backup appliances. With this modern approach, protected data is stored in an open format so customers can analyze and extract hidden value from the data to help transform businesses or achieve new breakthroughs faster.

There's no doubt that data is growing rapidly. This is putting multiple pressures on IT managers to optimize budgets and resources, reduce backup and restore times, design for regulatory and security mandates, and more efficiently balance workloads and applications on-premises and in the cloud. Today, traditional backup methods such as expensive backup appliances, or magnetic tape for long-term retention, are rendering themselves ineffective due to the volume, velocity and variety of data.

Gartner estimates that "by 2021, 50% of organizations will augment or replace their current backup application with another solution, compared to what they deployed at the beginning of 2017²." Adding to such a situation is the need to create a scalable long-term strategy that protects data that's captured, preserved, accessed and transformed for delivering greater insights and intelligence through data analytics and machine learning. 

"Together, Western Digital and StorReduce address many challenges IT managers face in protecting their valuable data," said Phil Bullinger, general manager, Data Center Systems Business Unit, Western Digital. "Western Digital has the breadth and depth of products, systems and solutions, leveraging vertical innovation and integration, and industry experience to help solve tomorrow's challenges today. By working with StorReduce, we are enabling organizations to consolidate backup appliances, tape and other unstructured data silos into a single, easy-to-manage private or hybrid cloud solution."

The ActiveScale object storage system bundled with StorReduce's scale-out deduplication software enables on-premises or hybrid cloud-based storage for primary and secondary backups, with throughputs and recovery speeds faster than legacy backup appliances. The modular ActiveScale system starts at 480TB usable and can help enable a data forever architecture, allowing for non-disruptive upgrades, and seamless data durability across multiple hardware generations. As your system grows and changes, the ActiveScale and StorReduce solution can grow and change to meet those needs without sacrificing performance, data durability or TCO.

"We are excited to partner with Western Digital to offer our customers a combined solution designed with the ability to maximize storage efficiency for hybrid and private cloud environments," said Vanessa Wilson, CEO, StorReduce. "In today's ever-changing IT landscape, we are now able to provide customers with a seamless solution built for the cloud to protect increasing amounts of data easily and cost effectively, while also giving customers the ability to leverage data for analytics, search, machine learning and more."

The combined solution is available today through Western Digital. To learn more about this partnership, visit www.hgst.com/storreduce. For more information about the ActiveScale family, visit: https://www.hgst.com/products/systems.

More Information:
Blog: "Are Your Backup Appliances Multiplying Like Rabbits?"
Webinar: "How to Solve Backup Appliance Sprawl"

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About Western Digital
Western Digital creates environments for data to thrive. 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 marketed under the G-Technology^®, HGST, SanDisk^®, Tegile™, Upthere™, and WD^® brands.

Forward-looking Statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the StorReduce software, ActiveScale storage system, combined solution of the two, and their expected availability, performance, features and benefits to customers. There are a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate including, among others: the StorReduce software, ActiveScale storage system, and combined solution of the two may not perform as expected or be available when expected; volatility in global economic conditions; business conditions and growth in the storage ecosystem; impact of competitive products and pricing; market acceptance and cost of commodity materials and specialized product components; actions by competitors; unexpected advances in competing technologies; our development and introduction of products based on new technologies and expansion into new data storage markets; risks associated with acquisitions, mergers and joint ventures; difficulties or delays in manufacturing; and other risks and uncertainties listed the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange commission (the "SEC") and available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov, including our most recently filed periodic report to which your attention is directed. We do not intend to update the information contained in this release.

¹Savings, based on StorReduce analysis, are calculated over five years, and may vary depending upon many factors including but not limited to: the amount and type of data stored, the frequency with which it is stored, and the solution being replaced.

²Source: Gartner, "Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions," Dave Russell, Pushan Rinnen, Robert Rhame, July 31, 2017.

Western Digital, the Western Digital logo, G-Technology, SanDisk, Tegile, Upthere, WD, and ActiveScale are registered trademark or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the US and/or other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

As used for storage capacity, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. Product specifications subject to change without notice. Not all products are available in all regions of the world.

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