Western Digital Introduces Purpose-built Surveillance Card For Trusted, 24/7, Next-Gen Video Capture

Western Digital Purple microSD Card Complements Company’s ‘Surveillance-Class’ Edge-to-Core Devices Portfolio, Enabling Real-Time Solutions to Capture, Transform, Preserve, and Access Video Surveillance Data

As the adoption of 4K Ultra HD video, emerging artificial intelligence (AI) applications and analytics drive the rapid growth and evolution of data in surveillance, Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today unveiled the Western Digital® Purple microSD™ card, purpose-built for the complex and dynamic data demands of modern surveillance cameras and edge systems.

Whether it’s a business employing surveillance video to keep their assets secure or a retailer utilizing surveillance to accurately analyze shopping behavior through video facial recognition, capturing and assessing every moment is critical. Optimized for 24/7 surveillance video capture, surveillance system operators can count on the robust Western Digital Purple microSD card to support a continuous surveillance workload. With its outstanding performance, the card captures and preserves video in a variety of high-definition and next-generation formats, including 4K Ultra HD video, as well as nimbly supports the movement of data to core data systems for analytics and fast business insights. The rugged and humidity-resistant design of this new card enables trusted video capture in a wide range of environmental conditions, including outdoors in snowy winters and indoors in hot and humid factory settings.

“From Big Data, to Fast Data, to data-centric applications such as surveillance, the volume, speed, variety and value of data continues to exponentially grow and transform. Leveraging our proven capabilities in consumer and industrial memory card innovation, the Western Digital Purple microSD card is the ideal solution for mainstream commercial surveillance data at the edge,” said Christopher Bergey, vice president of embedded and integrated solutions at Western Digital. “Whether capturing 4K video, used in AI-enabled cameras, or part of a larger data system supporting ‘smart surveillance’ applications, this rugged and intelligent card delivers ‘surveillance-class’ endurance and tremendous performance to enable trusted video capture in some of the harshest conditions. When combined with our popular Purple and Ultrastar hard disk drives (HDDs) to support data preservation and real-time analytics, Western Digital now provides the industry’s most comprehensive offering for surveillance data, from the edge to the core.”

Optimized for Evolving Data-Centric Surveillance Demands
Designed to support a wide range of video resolutions and surveillance video recording implementations, additional highlights of the new microSD card include:

• Robust Endurance for Continuous Recording: Supports up to 1,000 PE Cycles


• Card Health Status Functionality for Easy Card Maintenance: In compatible cameras, a unique health monitor offers reporting capabilities to provide users and system installers valuable information, including the card’s endurance and capacity status, enabling predictive maintenance and taking the “guess work” out of when to service the card.


• High Performance for Next-Generation Video: Offers speeds of up to 80 MB/s sequential read and 50 MB/s sequential write and supports Speed Class 10 and UHS Speed Class 1¹.


• Trusted Video Capture in Wide Range of Climates: Designed for use in temperatures ranging from -25°C to 85°C, it enables reliable video capture indoors and outdoors.


• High Capacity to Capture and Preserve Video if Connection to Network Connection is Lost: Offered in capacities up to 64GB²

“Today’s surveillance systems have moved beyond simple low-resolution video capture, to massive networks capturing 4K video and leveraging advanced new analytics software to unlock new business value from video recordings,” said Michael Palma, IDC Research Director for Semiconductor and Enabling Technologies. “This has resulted in a surge in the volume and velocity of surveillance data at the edge and is creating demand for storage solutions that support the performance requirements of 4K video, 24/7 operation, and movement of video for smart insights.”

Western Digital Purple Surveillance Device Portfolio Enables Surveillance Data to Thrive
The new Western Digital Purple microSD card complements a full portfolio of data storage devices purpose-built for today’s surveillance needs, including the Western Digital Purple Surveillance HDD for high-capacity support for NVRs and DVRs and the Ultrastar® HDD series for use in back-end servers performing surveillance analytics. Together, they provide surveillance system integrators and installers a complete solution to capture, preserve, access and transform surveillance data. Additionally, Western Digital offers original equipment manufacturers industrial-grade SanDisk® Industrial card storage solutions for use with cameras with in-camera analytics capabilities and a variety of connected surveillance applications.

Availability
The new microSD card will be available worldwide through Western Digital’s authorized reseller network in April in 32GB and 64GB capacities for $18.99 and $31.99 MSRP (in the U.S.) respectively; cards available in single and convenient 25-packs for surveillance system installers and integrators.

For more information on the Western Digital Purple microSD card and the complete Western Digital Purple surveillance portfolio, visit the Western Digital booth at ISC West International Security Conference & Exposition (Booth #2089) or go to https://www.wdc.com/edge-to-core.

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.

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Western Digital, the Western Digital logo, Ultrastar and WD Purple are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries. The microSD mark and logo are trademarks of SD-3C, LLC. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Product specifications subject to change without notice. © 2018 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

1 – One megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second. Based on internal testing; performance may vary depending on your hardware and software components and configurations.

2 – As used for storage capacity, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.

Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including the expected availability, benefits, features, pricing and performance of the Western Digital Purple microSD card. 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, 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 in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), 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.