Western Digital 2015 Annual Report Download - page 14

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devices, and video surveillance. WD also packages these hard drives into consumer appliances, which offer portable,
desktop and personal cloud storage for accessibility from anywhere and sharing functionality.
Enterprise Storage. Enterprise storage solutions consist of HDDs and SSDs for performance enterprise and
capacity enterprise markets. Our enterprise storage offerings include performance HDDs which are optimized for
performance applications providing a range of capacity and performance levels primarily for use in enterprise servers,
supporting high volume on-line transactions, data analysis and other enterprise applications. Our enterprise storage
devices also include capacity drives which provide enterprise class reliability at the lowest cost per gigabyte (“GB”)
and are primarily for use in data storage systems, in tiered storage models and where data must be stored reliably for
years. We recently launched the world’s first 10TB drive, a helium sealed HDD designed for active archive applica-
tions where the highest possible capacity is required while maintaining enterprise level reliability. Lastly, our enter-
prise storage solutions include solid-state solutions which feature high read/write speeds and include high capacities.
For 2015, our HGST subsidiary continued its leadership as the first and only supplier of helium-filled HDDs.
This advanced technology allows HGST to pack seven-platters in a standard 3.5” form factor providing up to 10TB
capacity. This drives down total cost of ownership at the data center level by providing significant improvements in
capacity, power, cooling and storage density. HGST reached an important milestone in March 2015, shipping its one
millionth helium drive.
Our enterprise HDD unit shipments were 31 million, 30 million and 28 million for 2015, 2014 and 2013,
respectively.
Through the calendar 2014 extension of the joint development agreement with Intel Corporation for SAS SSDs,
the calendar 2013 acquisitions of sTec, Virident and Velobit, and the calendar 2014 acquisition of Skyera, our HGST
subsidiary has strengthened its position in the fast growing market for enterprise class SSDs and SSD-based solutions.
We now offer a broad range of SSDs for the enterprise applications based on the SAS and PCIe interfaces. HGST also
delivers advanced software for caching, high-availability and clustering that accelerates traditional enterprise storage
environments and enables significant server consolidation and improved total cost of ownership for cloud and hyper-
scale environments.
Storage Platforms and Systems. Supporting HGST’s strategy to bring higher value data storage platforms and
systems to the market, HGST announced its first vertically integrated solution — the HGST Active Archive system.
The active archive system delivers a fully-configured S3-compliant, scale-out object storage system that utilizes
HGST’s helium-filled HDDs for improved storage economics. Through vertical innovation and integration, the active
archive system leverages HGST’s deep insight into storage systems resulting in an integrated, tuned and optimized
solution that delivers improved total cost of ownership that can be more cost-effective than traditional cloud infra-
structure.
Client: Desktop and Notebook PCs. Client compute solutions consist of HDDs for desktop and mobile PCs. Our
client compute storage solutions include HDDs designed for use in desktop PCs requiring high performance, reli-
ability and capacity with various attributes such as low cost per GB, quiet acoustics, low power consumption and
protection against shocks. In addition, we provide HDDs designed for use in mobile PCs and requiring high perform-
ance, reliability and capacity with various ranges of performance and attributes such as low power consumption for
extended battery life and cooler operation, quiet acoustics and protection against shocks.
We also offer Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (“SATA”) HDDs specifically designed for home and
small office network attached storage systems and optimized for energy efficiency and reliability, hard drives for video
recording applications, including surveillance, as well as HDDs designed for advanced single-user computing systems
such as professional systems for video editing and computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (“CAD/
CAM”) applications and high-end desktop PC applications including gaming, which require high performance and
high reliability. Our client compute HDD unit shipments were 136 million, 157 million and 162 million for 2015,
2014 and 2013, respectively.
Branded Products. Our branded product solutions consist of HDDs embedded into WD-, HGST- and G-
Technology-branded external storage appliances with capacities ranging from 500 GB to 24 TB and using interfaces
such as USB 2.0, USB 3.0, FireWireTM, ThunderboltTM and Ethernet network connections. Within branded products,
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