Enabling customers to design and build solutions for a variety of smart video workloads, Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced its expanded family of WD Purple™ storage solutions, including the industry's highest capacity 18TB* surveillance HDD for DVRs, NVRs and analytics appliances, and the 1TB* WD Purple SC QD101 microSD™ card for AI-enabled cameras. Setting the bar for smart video applications, all WD Purple drives are optimized to help reduce frame loss and pixelation, improve overall video playback and enhance streaming for 24x7 workloads – from ingest to backup and long-term storage – as the industry broadens the use of deep learning and analytics.
From commercial buildings to municipalities, businesses are accelerating adoption of AI and deep learning to enable automation and better efficiencies that ultimately help create a safer and better experience for employees, customers and communities. Deep learning algorithms, hungry for data generated by IoT and edge ecosystems, demand higher resolution for better accuracy, increasing the need for storage capacity in cameras and NVRs. In its recent report, Video Surveillance & Analytics Intelligence Service, July 2020, Omdia states that shipments of cameras enabled with deep learning algorithms will continue growing at a five-year (2019-2024) CAGR of 67 percent, and NVRs enabled with deep-learning analytics will grow at 37 percent. Meanwhile, video analytics appliances shipments are expected to grow at 43 percent. In addition, a 2020 Western Digital-commissioned survey of North American security system integration companies found that 76 percent of them see video analytics and AI as playing an ever-increasing role in their deployments.
Beyond Hardware
Western Digital's HDD firmware optimizations and data management capabilities for its WD Purple drives play a critical role in improving system capabilities as well as managing devices across AI-enabled smart video solutions. The combination helps improve performance, reliability, durability and overall better operational efficiency and TCO for customers. Western Digital's AllFrame™ technology for WD Purple HDDs delivers extensive caching and streaming management techniques to help prevent data loss and keep up with ongoing stream management. Western Digital Device Analytics™, a software-based solution for Western Digital's HDDs, provides monitoring and drive analysis to users, enabling them to detect problematic conditions on a drive and provides instructions for remediation before an issue occurs.
WD Purple 18TB HDD
Leading the industry in capacity for surveillance drives, the new WD Purple 18TB HDD is designed for NVRs and video analytics appliances as well as GPU-enabled devices that can deliver both real-time and post analytics applications. Offering 28 percent more capacity than the previous generation, the new 18TB drive has room to spare for storing video, reference images and metadata at the edge, to support more effective AI. WD Purple drives from 8TB to 18TB feature AllFrame AI technology that enables recording of up to 64 high-definition cameras, as well as an additional 32 streams for deep learning analytics.
WD Purple SC QD101 1TB microSD Card
This WD Purple 1TB microSD card is designed for AI-enabled cameras, surveillance cameras and edge devices, serving as primary or back-up data storage. It is based on Western Digital's advanced 96-layer 3D NAND technology, and delivers a combination of ultra-high endurance with up to 500 P/E cycles and comes in 1TB, 512GB, 256GB, 128GB, 64GB and 32GB capacities*. Rugged and durable, the WD Purple microSD card is weather resistant, humidity resistant and can withstand temperatures from -25° degrees to 85° degrees C. In compatible cameras, the card health monitor provides installers and integrators with the ability to gauge the remaining endurance and preemptively service the card if needed.
Availability
The WD Purple 18TB HDD will be available in October 2020, and the WD Purple SC QD101 1TB microSD card is expected to be available in November 2020.
Supporting Quotes:
"The new WD Purple drives are uniquely designed for the demands of edge and analytics security video appliances that will enable our customers to gain more insights from their visual data," said Tim Palmquist, vice president, Americas, Milestone Systems. "As a leading developer of open and independent IP video surveillance platforms, we value our relationship with Western Digital and are pleased to be working together to provide data storage that can support AI and deep learning, as well as manage multiple streams as video resolutions rise."
"Leading the charge for the digital transformation of physical security for our customers worldwide, we count on strategic partners such as Western Digital to deliver reliable and high performing storage solutions," said Martin Renkis, general manager Global Cloud Solutions Physical Security, Johnson Controls. "Every Tyco Cloud video surveillance solution runs on WD Purple today as it has for many years. As we continue to innovate with features such as cloud-based storage health monitoring and alerts, we will continue to count on Western Digital to deliver the advanced solutions our customers need. We make the world a safer place with Western Digital technology."
Eric Spanneut, vice president, Client Computing and Smart Video Business at Western Digital, said, "Working side-by-side with our customers and ecosystem partners gives us unique insights and focus on delivering solutions that are optimized for the most advanced security video workloads. AI is driving the need for more enhanced capabilities in drives to keep up with performance demands, especially as video resolution and the number of incoming streams increase. We are in a unique position as the combination of our software and expanding drive portfolio makes our solutions ideal for deployment into a multitude of smart video applications."
Western Digital's Purpose-Built Portfolio of Offerings
The new WD Purple family adds to Western Digital's growing portfolio of HDD and SSD solutions purpose-built for a variety of market needs. These include the new 16TB and 18TB WD Red™ Pro HDDs for SMB NAS applications (It's Here! WD RedTM Pro 16TB & 18TB for Growing Productivity); the enterprise-class 16TB and 18TB WD Gold™ HDDs; WD Gold NVMe™ SSDs; WD Black™ solutions that meet the extreme demands of gamers; as well as WD Blue™ and WD Green™ SSDs to boost the computing experience.* These solutions are available at select Western Digital distributors, retailers, e-tailers, resellers, system integrators, and the Western Digital store.
Resources:
Blog: How is AI Clearing the Vision of Smart Video?
Blog: With WD Purple™ microSD Cards, Security Cameras Endure an AI and 4K Future
Blog: Ready for the Rise of the Smart Fleets
Blog: Sustaining a Sustainability Company With World-Class Surveillance
About Western Digital
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. Our data-centric solutions are comprised of the Western Digital®, G-Technology™, SanDisk®, and WD® brands.
*As used for storage capacity, 1GB = 1 billion bytes and 1TB = one trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may be less depending on operating environment.
Western Digital, the Western Digital logo, G-Technology, SanDisk, WD, AllFrame, WD Black, WD Blue, WD Gold, WD Green, WD Purple, WD Red, and Western Digital Device Analytics are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the US and/or other countries. The microSD mark and logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of SD-3C, LLC. The NVMe word mark is a trademark of NVM Express, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Product specifications subject to change without notice. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products are available in all regions of the world.
© 2020 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENT
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including the expected availability, benefits, features, and performance of the new WD Purple 18TB HDD and WD Purple SC QD101 microSD card and market and industry trends. There are a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate including, among others: changes to specifications from standards organizations, future responses to and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, 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, divestitures, mergers and joint ventures; difficulties or delays in manufacturing, and other risks and uncertainties listed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's most recently filed periodic report, to which your attention is directed. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.
