Leveraging its data center storage insights, HGST, a Western Digital company (NASDAQ: WDC), is broadening its scope of innovation to capture new and growing opportunities in data center storage infrastructure. The company today announced six new offerings that will help organizations manage the increasing volume, velocity, variety and longevity of data in today's rapidly evolving data center.

In addition to maintaining its longstanding leadership in storage devices, the new offerings demonstrate HGST's commitment to transform the data center and itself through hardware and software solutions that elevate the value it provides to partners and customers. By creating innovative solutions that shape the emerging categories of Flash fabric solutions and active archive solutions, HGST is driving the data center evolution by helping organizations readily extract the information, knowledge and wisdom that lies within their data.

Enterprise storage leader HGST, a Western Digital company, today announced its new series of NVMe-compliant Ultrastar SN100 PCIe SSDs. HGST's NVMe PCIe SSDs, integrating Toshiba's current MLC NAND Flash, will drive the next wave of application acceleration with simplified PCIe SSD system integration paired with HGST's renowned quality and reliability. The standardized NVMe protocol for PCIe SSDs enables broad system interoperability and ease of deployment, resulting in lower cost of ownership.

Targeting application and database acceleration, virtualization and big data analytics, the Ultrastar SN100 series of SSDs will be offered as a half-height, half-length (HH-HL) add-in card, as well as in a standard 2.5-inch drive form factor, with industry-leading capacities up to 3.2 TB. For added NAND Flash endurance and reliability, the Ultrastar SN100 series will deploy HGST's CellCare NAND management technology optimized for Toshiba MLC NAND Flash.

Enterprise storage leader HGST, a Western Digital company today announced it will extend the use of Intel NAND Flash technology as part of a cooperative agreement with Intel Corporation on Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) solid state drives (SSDs). Since 2008, HGST has successfully worked with Intel to develop industry-leading enterprise-class SAS SSDs for servers, workstations and storage systems. The resulting products have combined HGST's enterprise storage experience with Intel's NAND Flash expertise, and are the foundation for HGST's leading position in SAS SSDs.

Intel's focus and investment in NAND flash memory research and SSD development provides industry-leading advancements in next-generation NAND lithography and offers high-endurance SSD technology. HGST brings proven enterprise storage expertise in SAS design, firmware, reliability, customer qualification and system integration. This combination enables HGST to deliver world-class solutions with the performance, endurance and reliability that enterprise storage customers demand.

Enterprise storage leader HGST, a Western Digital company, today is previewing a new architecture for solid-state drives (SSDs) that enables applications to provide faster insights to the data-intensive questions of tomorrow. The demonstration shows unprecedented SSD performance levels that are achieved by utilizing a combination of HGST's new, latency-optimized interface protocols with next-generation non-volatile memory components.

The SSD demonstration utilizes a PCIe interface and delivers three million random read IOs per second of 512 bytes each when operating in a queued environment and a random read access latency of 1.5 microseconds (us) in non-queued settings, delivering results that cannot be achieved with existing SSD architectures and NAND Flash memories. This performance is orders of magnitude faster than existing Flash based SSDs, resulting in a new class of block storage devices.

HGST, a Western Digital company, today announced the launch of its new FlashMAX III family of PCIe accelerators, which deliver a dramatic improvement in price/performance for today's most demanding database and cloud workloads. Also introduced today is the new HGST ServerCache software that allows IT administrators to inject acceleration into their existing storage infrastructure by quickly and easily deploying a hybrid flash environment with any SSD.

"For businesses to remain competitive, application performance matters. Data needs to be instantly accessible for real-time processing, analytics and insights," said Ulrich Hansen, vice president of SSD product marketing, HGST. "To address this need, enterprise customers are actively looking to add flash into their storage infrastructure. Whether focused on peak application acceleration with an all-SSD environment, improving lagging performance by tiering or using caching to leverage combined HDD and flash environments, our new hardware and software solutions help strike that balance among performance, complexity and cost."

HGST, a Western Digital company (NASDAQ: WDC), today announced its next-generation of Ultrastar 12Gb/s SAS solid-state drives (SSDs) with capacities up to 1.6TB. Building upon its award-winning first generation 12Gb/s SAS SSDs, the new Ultrastar SSD800MH.B, Ultrastar SSD1600MM and Ultrastar SSD1600MR are the ideal building blocks for server and storage systems running today's performance-sensitive enterprise applications.

The Ultrastar SAS SSDs create new price/performance points by combining HGST's deep enterprise storage expertise developed over the last 50 years, HGST's customer-proven 12Gb/s SAS technology and Intel's 20 nanometer (nm) high endurance enterprise-grade MLC NAND memory. As a result, HGST's Ultrastar SAS SSDs excel in key total cost of ownership (TCO) metrics for enterprise applications, including transactions/$ and transactions/watt.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a professional network attached storage (NAS) provider, today announced that its Enterprise and SMB class Turbo NAS products support the 6TB HGST Ultrastar He6 helium-filled SAS hard disk drive (HDD). By incorporating HGST's HelioSeal platform technology, business users receive enhanced NAS performance with maximized storage capacity and low power for reduced total cost of ownership.

The inherent benefit of helium, which is one-seventh the density of air, helps reduce the turbulence caused by spinning disks in a HDD, thereby cutting power consumption and lowering drive temperature, making the HGST Ultrastar He6 HDD an ideal large-capacity 3.5-inch HDD solution for enterprises and SMBs to store and secure growing business data.

HGST, a Western Digital company, today announced that it is now shipping the world's highest capacity and highest performing 10K RPM hard disk drive (HDD) - the Ultrastar C10K1800. Based on HGST's field proven high-quality design, the 2.5-inch small form factor (SFF), enterprise-class Ultrastar C10K1800 combines high capacity with a significant improvement in both random write and sequential performance for mission-critical storage applications requiring 24/7 availability.

As the demand for enterprise-class storage grows, customers are increasingly seeking tiered storage infrastructures built along a range of raw IOPS performance, capacity and $/GB price efficiencies. While solid state drives (SSDs) and 15K HDDs fill a clear need in high performance solutions, the demand for 10K HDDs continues to be strong as customers seek better $/GB metrics.

Enterprise storage leader HGST, a Western Digital company, will demonstrate a new open Ethernet drive architecture offering new flexibility and capabilities for developers and operators of OpenStack cloud software at the OpenStack Summit, May 12-16 in Atlanta, GA.

The open Ethernet drive architecture demonstration will show for the first time how data centers can seamlessly scale-out storage infrastructures and run new and existing applications distributed directly onto hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs) for next generation big data processing, analytics, research queries and other applications that require long-term retention of active data. This open drive architecture has integrated CPU and memory resources running Linux, and can be mixed with existing data center infrastructure, allowing applications the option to run as close to the storage resource layer as possible.

HGST, a Western Digital company, today announced that it is shipping a new family of high-performance, high-capacity, 2.5-inch small form factor (SFF), 15K RPM enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDD) - the Ultrastar C15K600 family. Delivering best-in-class performance and capacity in one streamlined solution, the new Ultrastar C15K600 family enables higher density and higher performing servers, blades and network storage arrays all while reducing space requirements, lowering cooling costs and improving total cost of ownership (TCO).

Enterprise Demands Necessitate Fast, Efficient Storage
The demand for more efficient storage continues to grow as IT and facilities collide, creating the need for a better balance between capacity, performance, physical space and energy usage. To bridge this gap, customizing and tiering infrastructure workloads and tuning HDDs and SSDs by application and function will help data center managers more efficiently handle ever-increasing amounts of data.

Delivering solutions designed for an increasingly mobile and connected lifestyle, HGST, a Western Digital company, today announced that it is expanding its family of external storage and backup solutions with its new line of Touro S mobile external hard drives.

Available in colorful metallic finishes such as gold, silver, ruby and platinum, the Touro S drive family delivers two levels of data protection - local backup and cloud storage - to help protect, transport, store and access photos, music, videos and documents from anywhere. With its thin, stylish design and an aluminum enclosure, the 7,200 RPM hard drive-based external drives moves files up to 23 percent faster than standard 5,400 RPM-based drives.

Seagate is reportedly working on a 6 terabyte hard drive, which it plans to roll out in Q2 (April-June), 2014. According to leaked company road-maps, the drive could be launched in the later part of the quarter, and could be branded in the new Constellation ES.3 Megalodon series. The drive will be built in the 3.5-inch form-factor, its interface, however, remains unclear (whether it's SATA or SAS). The drive tucks in six 1000 GB platters. Competitor HGST's 6 TB Helium drive, in comparison, runs seven 857 GB ones. Given its enterprise credentials, Seagate could give it at least 7,200 RPM spindle speeds.

HighPoint Technologies, a pioneering force in the storage industry for the past 18 years, unveils its latest Thunderbolt Storage Solution, the NA762TB. HighPoint's NA762TB is a full-featured storage powerhouse backed by industry proven hardware-RAID technology, and delivers the uncompromised performance, superior reliability, and effortless every-day usability demanded by today's leading media professionals.

The NA762TB seamlessly merges the simplicity and speed of Thunderbolt with HighPoint's industry proven RAID technology. Powered by a dedicated RAID processor with 512 MB of DDR3, & 8 removable SAS/SATA disk modules, the NA762TB is the ideal storage platform for professional applications that demand uncompromised performance, unparalleled data security, & effortless usability. The integrated hardware RAID technology was validated by HGST and G-Technology, and is suggested as a bundle with G-Speed eS PRO Mini-SAS Storage Solutions.

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, today announced that the company has entered a partnership with Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST), a leading HDD provider, to deploy the new HGST Ultrastar He6 6 terabyte (TB) helium-filled hard disk drives (HDDs) into its storage systems. Being one of the first vendors across the world to employ HGST's helium-filled HDDs, which feature the largest capacity in the industry, Huawei is dedicated to providing storage products and solutions with high capacities and reduced power consumption.

"Huawei is very glad to collaborate with HGST in the helium-filled hard drive domain. With a high-density design, the integration of this technology into Huawei's storage systems, will enable us to provide customers with storage products and solutions that offer bigger capacity, higher efficiency and lower power-consumption," said Mr. Fan Ruiqi, President of Storage Product Line, Huawei Enterprise.

G-Technology, a leader in delivering premium storage solutions for consumers and content creators, today announced two new high-performance portable external storage solutions. The sleek and portable G-DRIVE slim and G-DRIVE mobile, already favorites among design-conscious users who need fast, reliable storage on the go, are now available with 7,200 RPM hard disk drives (HDDs). When compared to 5,400 RPM-based HDD models, these external drives deliver up to 20-40 percent faster data transfer rates for quicker access to photos, videos, music and documents.

"In this digital world, we all need reliable, fast storage to protect the photos, videos and music that mean the most to us," said Mike Williams, vice president and general manager, G-Technology. "Whether you're a professional photographer needing to store and protect content in the field, or a consumer needing a simple storage and backup solution, our new portable external drives are the solution. Each external drive delivers performance, reliability and style in a sleek, portable design."

HGST, a Western Digital company, today announced that it is shipping the 6 TB Ultrastar He6 hard disk drive (HDD). Key OEM, cloud and research leaders working closely with HGST to qualify the drive include HP, Netflix, Huawei Unified Storage, CERN, Green Revolution Cooling and Code42, as well as some of the world's largest social media and search companies.

Revealed in September 2012, HGST's cutting-edge HelioSeal platform provides a path for higher capacity storage for decades to come while significantly lowering customer total cost of ownership (TCO). Leveraging the inherent benefits of helium, which is one-seventh the density of air, the new Ultrastar He6 drive features HGST's innovative 7Stac disk design with 6 TB, making it the world's highest capacity HDD with the best TCO for cloud storage, massive scale-out environments, disk-to-disk backup, and replicated or RAID environments.

HGST, a Western Digital company, today announced that it has shipped more than 100 million Travelstar Z-series, 7.0-millimeter (mm), 2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDD). As the 7.0 mm HDD market maker, HGST also launched the new 2.5-inch, 1 TB, Travelstar Z5K1000 drive - the industry's fastest 7.0 mm 5,400 RPM HDD with best-in-class shock robustness for thin, ultra-portable laptops, Ultrabooks, external storage and ultra-compact CE devices. Embraced by all of the top global PC OEMs, HGST's 7.0 mm Z-series HDD family features common connectors and mounting points for easy integration into existing systems to enable greater design flexibility for new thinner, lighter and more robust consumer electronics devices.

"The 7.0 mm 2.5-inch mobile market continues to be a strategic space for HGST as evidenced by our record 100M shipments," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, HGST. "With the addition of our new 1 TB Travelstar Z5K1000, HGST continues to offer the market's broadest 5,400 and 7,200 RPM 7.0 mm 2.5-inch hard drive portfolio to meet the needs of a diverse mobile computing and storage segment."

Western Digital Corp. announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Virident Systems, Inc., a leading provider of server-side flash storage for virtualization, database, cloud computing, and webscale applications. Virident will be integrated into HGST, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital. The acquisition furthers HGST's strategy to address the rapidly changing needs of enterprise customers by delivering intelligent storage solutions that maximize application performance by leveraging the tightly coupled server, storage and network resources of today's converged datacenter infrastructures.

The Virident acquisition follows HGST's recent purchase of sTec, an early innovator in enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs) and VeloBit, an advanced I/O optimization software company. These investments expand HGST's presence in the rapidly growing and strategic enterprise SSD space, which IDC predicts will grow from $2.5 billion in revenue in 2012 to $7.2 billion in revenue by 2017.

HGST, a Western Digital company, today announced that it is shipping its new MegaScale DC 4000.B, a 3.5-inch, 4 TB, 6 Gb/s SATA hard disk drive (HDD). As the company's second-generation MegaScale drive, the new MegaScale DC 4000.B has been further optimized based on customer feedback to meet the explosive growth of infrequently accessed data, while balancing the right mix of power, capacity, performance and reliability. As part of a tiered storage strategy, the MegaScale DC 4000.B is designed for low-workload applications such as bulk storage for unstructured or big data, disk-to-disk backup, online archives, or long-term data retention where cost-per-GB, watt-per-GB and GB-per-square foot are critical parameters.

"With the explosive adoption of free email, social networks and Internet services, the capacity requirements for cloud and hyperscale data centers are growing astronomically. These environments are constantly looking for ways to improve their storage infrastructure costs and the bottom line," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, HGST. "As a leading drive supplier to some of the world's largest cloud data center providers, we understand the demanding storage requirements for low workload applications in these hyperscale environments. With the MegaScale DC 4000.B, we're delivering massive capacity in a low-power, performance-optimized drive to help customers achieve superior capital savings, operational efficiencies and energy conservation in the data center."

HGST today announced that it is shipping its new Endurastar J4K320 family, a single-platter hard disk drive (HDD) specifically designed for the automotive infotainment and telematics markets. As HGST's sixth generation automotive HDD, the new Endurastar J4K320 family is based on proven technology, provides the industry's highest automotive HDD capacity at 320GB (220% more capacity than its predecessor) and is built to operate in extreme and varying temperatures and altitudes.

The requirements for automotive-class hard drives are quite different from hard drives designed for personal computers or other stationary consumer electronic devices. These drives must go through a stringent qualification process as in-car manufacture installations or after-market solutions can face the most extreme conditions - from high altitudes in the Alps to searing heat in the Sahara Desert. The Endurastar J4K320 operates at altitudes of up to 5500 meters (18,044.62 feet), supports an operating temperature range of -30°C to +85°C (-22°F to 185°F), and has improved operating shock tolerance of 300G (2ms) and a non-operating shock of 800G (ms) for extra reliability and data protection when driving on damaged or unpaved roads.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) announced today that its board of directors met in China, concluding two days in Beijing. The board is next traveling to Shenzhen SEZ, Guangdong Province, for site visits and additional meetings. "China is both a very important market for Western Digital as well as a key manufacturing base," said Steve Milligan, president and chief executive officer, Western Digital Corporation. "As China further develops its technology industries, we look forward to expanding our relationships with a wide range of Chinese entities for the benefit of our shareholders, as well as our Chinese partners."

Over the course of its two days in Beijing, the board discussed China's development and future trends with a diverse group of Chinese and international experts. A highlight of the Beijing portion of the visit was a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang. "The board is extremely impressed by China's growth and development plans, as explained by the Vice Premier, and appreciative of the support the Chinese government has extended to Western Digital Corporation in this exciting market," said Western Digital board chairman, Thomas E. Pardun. Pardun also added that it was important for the board to see firsthand Western Digital's operations in this key economy.

Western Digital Corp. announced today that it has completed the acquisition of sTec, Inc., an early innovator in enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs). sTec will be integrated into HGST, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital. The acquisition augments HGST's existing solid-state storage capabilities, accelerating its ability to expand its participation in the rapidly growing area of enterprise SSDs.

Completion of the sTec acquisition follows HGST's recent purchase of VeloBit, an advanced SSD caching software company, and the proposed acquisition of Virident, an innovative provider of server-side flash storage solutions. Collectively these building blocks expand HGST's presence in the enterprise SSD space, which IDC predicts will grow from $2.5B in revenue in 2012 to $7B in revenue by 2017.

Western Digital Corp. and Virident Systems, Inc. announced today that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Virident, a provider of server-side flash storage solutions, will be acquired by HGST, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital. Virident will be acquired for approximately $685 million in cash. This represents approximately $645 million in enterprise value, net of Virident's estimated cash balance at closing.

Virident is a technology leader in one of the fastest growing segments in enterprise and cloud computing. Virident solutions enable enterprises to tackle performance-intensive datacenter applications with PCIe-based enterprise flash storage solutions for virtualization, database, cloud computing, and webscale applications. Virident's FlashMAX II can be installed in any server and provides the highest capacity in a single low-profile card, enabling organizations to maximize the use of valuable datacenter space, reduce datacenter sprawl and provide uncompromising performance. In addition, the company's FlashMAX Connect is the industry's first software suite to deliver a shared server-side flash storage tier with enterprise-class reliability.

WD, a Western Digital company, announced that it has founded the Storage Products Association (SPA) with other hard drive companies to promote the merits and value of rotating magnetic storage technologies, as well as to make consumers and professionals aware of how critical hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state hybrid drives (SSHDs) are to their digital lives.

SPA members include HGST, Seagate, Toshiba and WD. The organization helps storage manufacturers and users understand and support current and future storage needs, including the key role of hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state hybrid drives, in an effective storage mix for all consumer and business environments. SPA will provide education to its customers, partners, members and users of HDDs and SSHDs. SPA will also participate in industry and user events, and will publish materials about end users' storage needs and effective usage of a mix of storage technologies.

Western Digital Corp. today reported revenue of $15.4 billion and net income of $1.7 billion, or $6.75 per share for fiscal year 2013, compared to fiscal 2012 revenue of $12.5 billion and net income of $1.6 billion, or $6.58 per share. On a non-GAAP basis, fiscal 2013 net income was $2.1 billion or $8.53 per share, compared to fiscal 2012 net income of $2.1 billion or $8.61 per share.

For its fourth fiscal quarter ended June 28, 2013, the company reported revenue of $3.7 billion, hard-drive shipments of 59.9 million and net income of $416 million, or $1.71 per share. On a non-GAAP basis, net income was $477 million or $1.96 per share. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $4.8 billion, net income of $745 million, or $2.87 per share, and shipped 71.0 million hard drives. Non-GAAP net income in the year-ago quarter was $872 million, or $3.35 per share.