WD has focused heavily on its second generation Red SOHO (small office and home) NAS drives this week, as it hopes to appeal to small office buyers.
The first generation Red drives were released in 2012, and were, WD said, the first hard drives on the market purpose-built for one to five-bay NAS enclosures. The launch of the second generation of Red drives marked another world first as WD became the first storage vendor in the world to offer a 2.5-inch drive designed for one to five-bay NAS enclosures.
According Khwaja Saifuddin, Senior Sales Director, Middle East, Africa and South Asia, WD, the appetite for devices such as the Red drives is being driven by the explosion of data in the SOHO segment.
"Users in the SOHO segment today have multiple computing devices, want remote access and want their data to be protected by robust storage systems and a WD Red powered NAS is the perfect answer to all these demands," he said.
"While the adoption of these devices has been tempered slightly, owing to a lack of knowledge about NAS products and costly Internet and mobile data packages, we expect the demand to increase steadily in the coming years as storage needs grow."
Meanwhile, WD has also showcased a number of other product this week, including its AV family of drives, which are designed for 24/7 video streaming environments and are targeted at those who need robust storage to complement surveillance recorders, Saifuddin said.
"These drives are optimised to tackle continuous video recording and so offer high-storage capacities (up to 3TB) and advanced power saving technology such as WD IntelliPower and WD IntelliPark to reduce power consumption by up to 40 percent compared to competitor products. These drives are ideal for PVRs, DVRs, STBs and surveillance video recorders," he explained.
