Western Digital Featured in CRN’s 2019 Partner Program Guide

Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC), a leading data infrastructure company, today announced that CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, has awarded Western Digital two 5-Star ratings in its 2019 Partner Program Guide. The two programs include the  company's Data Center Systems' Enterprise Partner Program and its myWD™ Partner Program supporting its HDD and flash-based portfolios respectively. These distinct partner programs support integrators and resellers serving a diverse spectrum of IT market segments and use cases ranging from personal storage to IoT solutions and gaming to mission-critical, high-performance storage workloads to software-defined storage and public, private and hybrid cloud environments.

This annual guide identifies the strongest and most successful partner programs in the channel today, offered by the top technology suppliers for IT products and services. The 5-Star rating recognizes an elite subset of companies that offer solution providers the best partnering elements in their channel programs. To determine the 2019 5-Star ratings, The Channel Company's research team assessed each supplier's partner program based on investments in program offerings, partner profitability, partner training, education and support, marketing programs and resources, sales support, and communications.

"Western Digital's commitment to our partner programs is unrivaled, from our high-impact partner summits, to providing an expanded channel team with an emphasis on a high-touch coverage model, including regular and consistent partner engagement," said Sven Rathjen, vice president of global channel marketing, Western Digital.

"Our channel partners are a natural extension of our business.  Whether they are enabling hybrid cloud, analytics/ML, virtualization or database acceleration, our goal is to deliver the right solution with the right performance, economics, scale and efficiency needed to help them grow their business, maximize profitability and most importantly please their customers," said Dawn Marie Ruszel, vice president, enterprise partner sales and marketing for Western Digital's Data Center Systems business unit.

Western Digital Enterprise Partner Program:
The Western Digital Enterprise Partner Program (EPP) is a dedicated high-touch program focused on leveraging joint resources for mutually beneficial relationships. The program provides key partner resources such as dedicated local sales, engineering and marketing, joint development of go-to-market plans, exclusive access to customer intelligence tools and more. With its unwavering commitment to the channel, Western Digital has tripled the size of its enterprise partner team and added a field partner marketing division to drive joint marketing initiatives and nation-wide brand awareness campaigns, including digital marketing, activities, and regional events. Western Digital's extensive Data Center Systems portfolio includes the IntelliFlash™ hybrid, all-flash and NVMe™ all-flash storage systems; ActiveScale™ petabyte-scale, cloud object storage system; OpenFlex™ NVMe-over-fabrics (NVMe-oF™) open composable infrastructure; and its Ultrastar® sever and storage platforms.

Western Digital myWD Partner Program
The myWD Partner Program is created for VARs, system integrators, solution providers and managed service providers who sell storage drives, NAS and surveillance solutions. The program offers a comprehensive line up of benefits including direct incentives, member-only promotions and exclusive access to a rich set of marketing tools.

"With new technologies emerging every year, evaluating which IT vendors to partner with grows increasingly more complex for solution providers," said Bob Skelley, CEO, The Channel Company. "We are proud the CRN Partner Program Guide has become the trusted resource to identify the most rewarding partner programs and provides crucial insight into their strengths and benefits for the channel."

The 2019 Partner Program Guide will be featured in the April issue of CRN and online at http://www.crn.com/ppg.

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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 Western Digital, G-Technology™, SanDisk®, Upthere™ and WD® brands.

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About The Channel Company
The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers and end users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequalled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace.
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© 2019 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Western Digital, the Western Digital logo, WD, ActiveScale, IntelliFlash, OpenFlex and Ultrastar are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the US and/or other countries. The NVMe word mark is a trademark of NVM Express, Inc. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.