Q. How Digitisation is an opportunity for Western Digital?
A. Digitisation today has created greater horizons given the stupendous rate with which we are creating and storing data. With PC penetration still below 12%, there is an opportunity to increase PC penetration in India through digital infrastructure. We believe that the digitally empowered youth in India will drive the next phase of PC growth. People now are opting for higher capacity drives which are suiting their changing lifestyles. WD identifies it as a significant opportunity to cater to this growing need wherein consumers look forward to solutions fulfilling mass storage digitally. An increased focus on security, both at a personal and national level, is leading to a surge in demand for surveillance drive. This is where WD sees the potential to further build on its category of WD Purple products. The creation of massive-scale data centres, storing gigantic volumes of digital information generated due to efforts in digitalisation and smart cities is yet another opportunity to leverage.
Q. What are the challenges that exist in the storage solution market in India?
A. Despite optimistic predictions and obvious interest from global players, a variety of challenges have held India’s storage solution potential back even as adoption continues growing. These have contributed to a situation in which, regardless of significant awareness, most SMBs are still risking not using NAS-enabled storage and most large Indian enterprises are not thought to host more than 15 percent of their ICT processes in the cloud.
A more ongoing problem is the country’s Internet infrastructure (i.e., bandwidth constraints and fiber optic weaknesses) and the inconsistency of its power supply in some areas.
India also presents a mixed policy environment for storage and cloud services. Some elements of the environment remain undefined (e.g., India lacks a formal data breach notification rule), while others are clearly positive (e.g., there do not appear to be tariffs on software downloads) and some negative (e.g., government procurement, which though a major source of IT spending is reportedly a complex, multifarious process).
However, the government is acutely aware of these challenges, and its ambitious ‘Digital India’ programme aims to address some of the infrastructural weaknesses. But it remains to be seen if the new developments will lead to significant improvements.
With storage at the heart of digitisation today, WD plays a pivotal to enable digital lives of its customers function seamlessly and ensuring that the PM’s Digital India and Smart Cities vision is fully supported.
