Western Digital Expands Smart Video Surveillance Solutions for Growing AI-Enabled Workloads from Endpoint to Cloud

Empowering the world's essential data infrastructure, Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced the expansion of the WD Purple family with the WD Purple™ Pro product line for a new generation of advanced AI-enabled recorders and backend servers.

The worldwide video surveillance camera market is estimated to grow to $44 billion by 2025, up from $23.6 billion in 2019, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). Emerging smart video architectures that capture, store and analyze massive amounts of video data, and perform heavy deep-learning video analytics, are putting an unprecedented level of stress on storage subsystems. The new WD Purple Pro line is designed to handle these workloads with optimized storage performance, capacity, workload capability and reliability for a myriad of devices, including AI-enabled network video recorders (NVRs), video analytics appliances, video analytics servers, storage arrays, and storage/server solutions, including those that perform deep-learning analytics.

"With the addition of WD Purple Pro, our full portfolio of smart video products covers customers' needs from dedicated WD Purple microSD™ cards for cameras to WD Purple hard drives for mainstream NVRs and the new generation of smart video architectures, where the 'smart' of the solution starts with the brains at the backend – the servers that perform video analytics and heavy computational deep learning," said Brian Mallari, director of marketing for Smart Video, Western Digital. "WD Purple Pro is the ideal solution to enable original equipment manufacturers and integrators to evolve their systems for emerging AI workloads."

WD Purple Pro hard drive benefits include:

• Enhanced AllFrame™ AI technology enabling video streams from up to 64 HD cameras to be recorded concurrently¹, while simultaneously handling up to an additional 32 AI streams for AI functions, whether cameras are directly connected to advanced recorders or to cloud-based servers.

• High performance and workload capability, supporting up to 550TB a year workload rating², provides for the additional demands of AI functionality, including pattern matching and object/event recognition, while writing a multitude of video streams.

• High reliability and capacity solutions help retain and feed thousands of hours of training video to enable effective deep-learning and AI algorithm development. Capacities range from 8TB to 18TB³ with a five-year limited warranty.

• Enterprise-class durability to work seamlessly in large-scale, high-density video analytics servers and cloud solutions. Offers ongoing HDD health monitoring in compatible systems with Western Digital Device Analytics™ support.

"Western Digital's new WD Purple Pro, AI-ready high-capacity solutions offer the performance needed for data-heavy workloads and provide the reliability our customers need to store their critical data," said Dave Nieweg, community program manager, Milestone Systems. "Whether providing more secure access to a building or school, monitoring patients, or capturing and analyzing smart city parking and transportation data for safety and efficiency, offering users a trusted storage solution from the cameras at the endpoints to the cloud is essential."

Western Digital's full family of WD Purple solutions includes 1TB³ WD Purple microSD cards for cameras and edge devices to 1TB-8TB³ WD Purple HDDs for NVRs; and now, WD Purple Pro drives from 8TB to 18TB³ to support a range of systems for AI-heavy workloads, including backend enterprise servers. WD Purple Pro solutions will be available this quarter from Western Digital resellers.

Related Western Digital resources:

• Speeding Up: How AI and Data Are Accelerating Our Cities - blog

• Storage for advanced smart video solutions – product brief

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.

¹Single stream per camera @ 3.2Mbps (1080p, H.265, 25 fps).  Results may vary depending on camera resolution, file format, frames per second, software, system settings, video quality, and other factors.

²Workload Rate is defined as the amount of user data transferred to or from the hard drive.  Workload Rate is annualized (TB transferred ✕ (8760 / recorded power-on hours)). Workload Rate will vary depending on your hardware and software components and configurations

³As used for storage capacity, 1GB = 1 billion bytes and 1TB = one trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may be less due to operating environment.

Western Digital, the Western Digital logo, G-Technology, SanDisk, WD, AllFrame, WD Purple, and Western Digital Device Analytics are registered trademarks 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. 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.

© 2021 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved.