A Look at Western Digital’s Product Portfolio

We’ve seen how storage companies, including Western Digital (WDC), NetApp (NTAP), Seagate Technology (STX), and International Business Machines (IBM), are likely to benefit from worldwide growth in data creation over the next few years. WDC is optimistic about its technology leadership in storage and extensive IP (intellectual property) portfolio to take advantage of that market.

It has more than 14,000 patents globally across hard drives and NAND[1. negative AND] technologies. WDC has shipped more than 20 million helium-based hard drives to date. Its subsidiary HGST was the first to launch a helium hard drive resulting in a significantly lower cost of ownership. Helium hard drives reduce energy consumption by 23% and the weight-to-data ratio by 30%.

Western Digital has claimed to make several technology breakthroughs for MAMR (microwave-assisted magnetic recording), which allows hard drives to scale in terms of reducing cost and increasing area density. WDC will be sampling MAMR technology later this year and could start commercializing it in 2019. WDC is also a leader in 3D (three-dimensional) flash across 64-layer and 96-layer.

Since Western Digital has an extensive portfolio of products and services across hard drives and NAND flash applications, it helps the company orient near-term commercial activity toward pockets of strength and focus on growth verticals in the long term.