HELPING DATA THRIVE

Khalid Wani of Western Digital plainly says, “Data is the new oil.” And we couldn’t agree more. As director of channel sales, India, for Western Digital, Wani has exponentially grown the business over the last few years. In the last four years itself, Western Digital has gone from being a hard disk drive manufacturing company to one offering a range of data storage solutions, including personal cloud solutions, wireless storage, external storage, portable drives and home entertainment products. In an interview with GQ, Wani shares his thoughts on how the data boom in the country is fuelling the need for smarter, more innovative storage solutions and how Western Digital is filling that gap

Tell us about how Western Digital Corporation (WDC) has evolved over the last few years.

For Western Digital, the last four years have been both critical and exciting, with respect to data. Today, as far as data is concerned, it is said to be the new oil. And it’s fuelling the growth in the economy. In the last four years, we have evolved from being a hard disk drive manufacturing company to a data technology solution provider. We have also gone through a series of mergers and acquisitions, notably those of SanDisk and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST), because we wanted to build a company that is able to provide digital and data storage solutions from edge to core. Edge is where the customer sits. Someone like me and you, who use a smartphone, personal computer, smartwatch, etc. Every device you use today is analysing data; and in order to analyse that data, these devices require storage facilities. When you look at the core, you’ll realise that the data that you are creating is getting analysed somewhere. And we, at WDC, sit there. When it comes to storage needs, WDC is a company that produces the products needed to store that content. We proudly yet humbly say that almost 50 per cent of the world’s data is stored on our devices – whether it is in the form of a brand like SanDisk, G-Technology or WD itself.

What is driving the growth in demand for storage in India?