With the rising popularity of AI and the anticipation around 5G, the storage industry has undergone a sea change. Can you highlight some of these changes?

With advancing 5G and AI capabilities, there will be an increased intelligence of devices and sophisticated services that could be delivered, resulting in an increase in data storage demand. The intersection of AI, IoT, and 5G enables edge computing resulting in more intelligence and more computing power migrating from the cloud down to the device. Fast data applications like autonomous vehicles, drones, surveillance, manufacturing, robotics, wearable diagnostics with real-time analytics. In addition, the speed of 5G networks will encourage people to download much larger files, including 4K HDR movies, 360-degree videos, VR content, and much more, all of which demand significantly more storage capacity. Deep learning still requires a capable cloud. In addition to the increasing storage demand at the edge, the growing amount of data that growing 5G networks generate will need storage capacity in the cloud to enable Big Data applications.

How is Western Digital poised to take on the new headwinds being seen in the industry brought on by emerging technologies?

Western Digital has a strong history of innovation, going back to the origins of both hard disk drive technology and flash technology. Western Digital develops a deep understanding of today’s and tomorrow’s architectures and workload changes by continuously working with market and innovation leaders. We continue to optimize, tune, and re-architect our storage technology to keep up with the growing demands of emerging technologies like AI/5G/smart video and drive new capabilities and smart use cases. The needs across smartphones, cloud, autonomous vehicles, smart video, smart wearables are varied and demand specialized ‘fit-for-purpose storage. Western Digital strives to build storage products that meet diverse customer needs depending on the applications in which these devices are used. For example, we have WD Purple™ for Video Surveillance, WD Black™ for Gaming, and WD Red™ Pro hard disk drives for NAS (Backup) showcasing how we custom design storage based on customer needs.

5G is expected to make telephony and data services more flexible and faster, AI systems are already streamlining themselves and getting better with more data. How is storage becoming more nimble, faster and adaptive?

For any data architecture, maximizing the value of data is the primary goal. Digital transformation is no longer an option and organizations must rethink their data infrastructure to enable data proliferation from the edge to the core to the cloud. While the healthcare industry should focus on long-term data retention and security, endurance and resilience are more important for a rescue drone. Similarly, high throughput and low latency are critical for autonomous vehicles. Standard ‘one size fits all solutions are no longer reliable. Storage also is evolving to be purpose-built to enable different solutions for different needs depending on various parameters like accessibility, endurance, capacity, and environment. For example, NVMe storage offers very low latency and high performance, Cloud is prioritized in case of long-term retention, etc.

Can you touch upon some of the opportunities that cloud-based storage offers to sectors like Industrial IoT, Healthcare and mobility?

IoT devices are increasingly generating a massive amount of data, much of which ultimately needs to go to the cloud. Sectors like healthcare, industrial IoT, and mobility are making the most out of it and changing towards a sustainable future.

Healthcare: Cloud-based storage will aid in efficient record-keeping, proper authorization and access to privileged information, integration with 3rd party systems/applications like Labs, and cloud-based AI and analysis in identifying trends, causes, and treatment of different diseases. From the healthcare industry perspective, bigger data sets power up medical research and development through advanced analytics. Various new business models that improve access to healthcare services like telehealth are made possible by leveraging the cloud.

Industrial IoT: Mechanised processes have advanced manufacturing in more than one way, and cloud-based storage brings to businesses important insights that can help in operations, future strategies and even scalability. Excessive costs of data centres are something that can be completely erased, helping businesses see a higher profit. With smart factories set up, employees can seamlessly detect problems that occur through enhanced collaboration and security, and monitor equipment maintenance from afar.

Mobility: 5G will bolster the current cloud computing environment and facilitate faster streaming of data and analytics. Due to better connectivity, 5G will further enable and promote remote work by boosting video conferencing, prompt sharing, and the ability to work anytime from anywhere. Mobility players have an opportunity to deliver true network and IT convergence by developing new partner ecosystems in offering innovative digital services across multiple verticals.

Edge computing/ edge AI is growing in popularity, especially for sectors like industrial IoT and autonomous vehicles. How is storage supporting edge data processing and analysis?

Let’s take the example of Autonomous vehicles. There are so many smart technologies built into an autonomous vehicle that they literally are supercomputers on wheels. In 2020, the average autonomous car processed 4,000 gigabytes of data per day, while the average internet user processed 1.5 gigabytes. As more built-in sensors, cameras, and internal networks are added to an AV, smarter applications will be developed generating even more data. When the AV tech evolves, the impact goes beyond cars, radically enhancing how people travel and experience life in the long run. Right and reliable storage is at the heart of how we architect the edge. Demand for specialized storage at the edge supports the development of even more dynamic capabilities.

How can new-age storage solutions be environment-conscious?

Data centers are among the largest consumers of power and electricity, using an estimated two percent of the world’s electricity. AI alone has the potential to increase data center use of the world’s electricity from 2% to 10% or even 15%. Cloud has been a common implementation nowadays and cloud-based storage has emerged on the foundation of eco-friendliness since the very beginning. The cloud titans pay particular attention to the Power Usage effectiveness metrics and use less energy than the industry average. Every drive that operates in a data center needs cooling, which takes a lot of power. To solve the high power consumption problem, one solution is to use higher density drives, meaning more storage capacity in the same space. Western Digital developed helium-filled hard drives instead of air-filled hard drives. Because helium is one-seventh the density of air there is less turbulence inside the drive, this helps in fitting more disks in the same 3.5-inch form factor, have less drag on the spinning disks, and ultimately lower power consumption. In a comparison of Western Digital’s 18TB helium-filled hard drives with 10TB air-filled drives, the 18TB drives (already giving 80% more capacity, optimizing rack space) bring greater power efficiency with 30% lower operating power and a 61% reduction in watts-per-TB.

Pretty much every company today is going the AI way. What do you think are some of the main qualities business leaders must possess to lead AI-forward/AI-inclined companies?

We have created AI technologies and not vice-versa. Leaders and organizations need to keep people at the centre of innovation. We should focus on empowering and advancing employees with the help of technologies. AI leaders should develop a solid data strategy and design the AI initiatives around their customers. The leaders should be adaptable and flexible with changing demands, and important of all, stay humane. At Western Digital, we believe in our core values of Think Big, Do it Together, Make it Happen. Our work environment is, therefore, the combination of multiple aspects which, when combined, promote a spirit of excellence in innovation, creativity, teamwork, and execution.