The need for storage of digital data was ever eminent. The fact that going to the moon and coming back had stored data of 4KB then, speaks volumes about the significance of data storage, although, today this figure of storage is readily available at our fingertips, in our smartphones. However, with the World Wide Web, the magnitude of data and its storage saw new relevance and need. The volume, veracity and velocity of data is just the reason why storage is the requirement from every quarters; and storage company Western Digital (WDC) does just this the best – provide voluminous, veracious and velocious storage. With the acquisition of Sandisk and Hitachi Global Storage Technology, the company is setting new feats at every orbit.
“If you look at the fundamental ingredient for technology explosion today, it is due to data. Anything and everything that we do in our personal or business lives – we are invariably creating and consuming data. It is indeed the underlying building block. One estimate says that India in 2020 will see around 2.2 million petabytes of data. This indicates that the fundamental element for any experience that we are going to have, as a consumer, or a startup or an enterprise is through data. Western Digital is one of the leading players in the industry which has the capability and the vision to create an environment for this data to thrive,” says Jaganathan Chelliah, Marketing Director, Western Digital India.
The company aims to architect data in a manner which will enable all forms of interesting initiatives, both, for consumers and businesses. Now with that in context, data is no more the domain of the information technology industry. It is all pervasive; everybody is creating and consuming data. “Any startup that is getting into business today is building the business based on certain amount of analytics. Large enterprises, too, have large quantum of data and they are building on it,” explains Chelliah. To this, Khalid Wani, Director – Channel Sales, Western Digital India, adds, “It has been interesting for the past couple of years. The integration of Sandisk and Hitachi into the entire ecosystem of Western Digital was not easy. We had a lot of work to do, and I am glad that the way things have shaped up for us in India is overwhelming. Especially, in the last two to three years, we have been able to complete the integration and have started realising tremendous growth opportunity.”
Western Digital’s wave in the consumer space
Western Digital today is well poised in the market with storage solutions for various niche segments. “It is perphaps the only organisation which offers comprehensive end-to-end portfolio. If you look at storage for personal use, most of it is revolving around mobile phones and personal computers. SanDisk offers mobile storage solutions, whereas, WDC offers portable storage solutions for PCs. Sandisk also has a portfolio of products which gets into cameras, drones and TV set-top boxes. Sandisk pretty much has a flash storage solution for everything around it. Also, today the most exciting thing in the IT space is the Solid State Drives and the market is growing rapidly. In India, Western Digital is the market leader in the segment as per the latest CMR study,” adds Chelliah.
From a data demand perspective, content in India has been aggressively growing over the past few years. “With that level of growth from content creation, the need and demand for storage consistently grows. Our focus in India is driven towards ensuring that we are engaging and optimising ourselves in every channel segment, to cater to that consumer content growth that is happening. Also, surveillance as a segment has been very important for us. The focus right now is not just from the central government, but the state governments, as well as from the consumer perspective. Thus, when surveillance is deployed, it is being deployed at different levels, from edge to core,” adds Wani.
Adding to the perspective, Chelliah says, “Any infrastructure project requires smart video solution. All smart cities today have an extremely strong surveillance solution backbone requirement. Not just that, individual homes may also look out at simple CCTV solution, while apartments look at wireless cameras; whereas, offices have their own requirements. For a smart cities solution, at the back end, data needs to be stored, and sometimes stored for several years. In that case, significant storage is required.”
“In terms of surveillance as a segment now, we realise the amount of work that we have to do in order to make sure that we are putting the right infrastructure to cater to this demand. Now in this segment, the channel that is engaged in delivering those solutions or products to the customer is dedicated and unique – which includes thousands of surveillance system integrators,” adds Wani.
He further points out, “Look at what is happening in the media and entertainment space. We, as a brand, have a product called G-Technology, which specifically caters to this segment. These are the products which are used by media and entertainment companies to ensure that the content that they create is properly secured. Each film costs crores of Rupees, so for the filmmakers, data is very precious, and their data is created and stored in different levels including pre-production, production, and post-production. For this, they require faster and reliable products. G-Technology is a product especially built for this purpose. Our focus and commitment to the market is such that we decided to open a store in Mumbai just a couple of months ago. Mumbai’s Andheri area happens to be the film production hub for India. We opened a store through one of our partners in Andheri, which was conceptualised predominantly, because we wanted to showcase our G-Technology products to the production industry, and it was warmly welcomed by the entire production fraternity, so we as a brand continue to work on such initiatives and look at segmentised approach whenever there are opportunities and deploy and execute our strategies.”
WDC’s Big Enterprise Drive
Western Digital’s enterprise journey in India started in 2016. The company has registered significant growth so far, although it is in the early stages. With this expansion now, and the rising demand, WDC realises that a lot of work needs to be done, especially on the channel front.
“However, when we started, we had to build some compelling success stories with large enterprises to build on a strong testimony. In the initial two, three years, we focused more on large customers directly before we go to channel. We wanted the channel to see our value proposition,” informs Vivek Tyagi, Senior Director, Enterprise Sales, Western Digital India.
“Enterprises look for two types of data. One is big data, which they store and retrieve for analytics whenever required, and the other is fast data, which is something that they keep using often. We have SSDs for these requirements. We also have large storage solutions in the form of JBODs, which is a collection of drives. The advantage of these large boxes is realised with software-defined storage. Thus, this is the play that Western Digital has. There is a complete end-to-end solution from the three major brands that are addressing all segments,” adds Chelliah.
This year, in the next few months, the company is conducting a three-city channel event targeting enterprise storage channel partners.
“In these events, we are planning interesting scheme for the channel. We look forward to engage with the channel on the enterprise front now. Although from a consumer perspective, the channel has been very strong, now we are building on a large channel presence for enterprise products and solutions as well,” says Tyagi.
He further informs that WDC’s enterprise division started with a small team and had to essentially focus on one or two verticals. “The one vertical that we chose was e-commerce as an industry. It is growing very rapidly, generating a huge amount of customer data. E-commerce companies need large quantities of storage as well. We had excellent success story with e-commerce customers. The other area was our engagement with cloud service providers. Public cloud is growing manifold and looking at WDC’s success story in North America and China, we initiated discussions with some of the India-based cloud service providers. If Indian cloud service providers must compete with the global ones, they need to rope in customers by offering them lower cost that they might have incurred on on-premise infrastructure. Thus, service providers were more interested in talking to us as a new player and if we are willing to work with them to lower their cost of infrastructure. We have been were quite successful there. Also, cloud service providers bring new customers every month. This way, these two verticals worked very well for us.”
After the success with the two verticals, WDC has been looking at other industries that have massive amount of data. “That is when we figured out that telecom and BFSI are the next set of verticals which have large customer data and because of government regulations, they need to store it for seven to ten years’ period. We picked the telecom segment six months ago. Right now, there are only three telcos in India and we are already engaged with two of these three. BFSI is next industry we are looking at, as part of our 2020 goal,” informs Tyagi.
Western Digital’s Channel Partner Programs in India
| SanDisk League of Heroes (SLH) | SLH recognises and rewards the best performing channel partners in the consumer segment. It will run for the whole year (2020). Each quarter represents a mission consisting of a number of stars that can earn the partners attractive rewards. The SLH program consists of rewards, booster rewards, and medallions that can earn exciting prizes. |
| Western Digital Elite Partner Promo | This program is for enterprise SIs and VARs who provide complete storage solutions to the customers. It is an annualised rewards program with quarterly rewards based on performance for the channel partners who sell Western Digital Ultrastar HDDs, SSDs and storage platforms and server portfolio that includes our JBOD, JBOFs, Ultrastar Serv24-A, and Ultrastar Serv60+8. |
| myWD Partner Program | myWD Partner Program is a highly successful rewards program that engages with partners within the IT channel and surveillance channel. The partners can participate in time bound rewards programs every quarter and get trained on select WD-branded products. There is also a certification program for partners specialised in CCTV solutions. |
| myWD Connect Program | myWD Connect Program is a WhatsApp based training and partner interaction platform, wherein partners learn about the latest tech trends, product benefits through a gamified program, using weekly and monthly quiz contests, quarterly promos and new product updates. |
| TechTalk App | TechTalk App is one-of-its-kind app based on-the-go training tool. This platform offers short videos on new products, educating retailers on the product benefits. About 1,300 mobile and camera retail partners are enrolled in this program. We impart training on the key selling points of the focus products and also keep the channel updated with contests, rewards and continuous communication about the host device ecosystem. |
| WD Purple Storage Calculator App | Nifty app from Western Digital helps partners in estimating the storage requirements for video surveillance. How much storage does your smart CCTV security system need? This is dependent on several factors including the number of days to be stored. The WD Purple Storage Calculator app takes your input and calculates the ideal capacity for your application. It calculates card life based on usage patterns that the customer enters and also recommends storage requirements based on usage patterns that the customer enters. |
Channel strategy
According to Chelliah, WDC’s major goal is firstly to build the brand. Second is to create demand and the third, and most important, is to build a strong relationship with the partners.
“One important aspect that needs to be put across to the channel community is how they can integrate our technology into their business, and how they can ensure that they provide the right value to their customers. Towards this attempt, we are taking up several initiatives. We have created sales tools to educate them, and train them on how they can upgrade a hard disk to an SSD and provide them strong training initiatives. We have built communities to provide them constant information in terms of the latest that is coming in the storage space. It can also be looked at as one integrated initiative, wherein some parts include talking to the consumer to create demand for the channel, and talking directly to the channel partners, so that they can understand how they should integrate this product,” says Chelliah.
Channel is a strategic asset for WDC, and the company has one of the most comprehensive channel networks and channel marketing initiatives to facilitate this network. Different verticals have different types of channel operating in this space. The consumer channel has two types of partners in the retail network. While a bulk of the consumer business goes through the mobile phone retail network, the other part goes through the camera retail network; whereas, there is some which goes through, what we call, large format retail and gadget retail stores. WDC has built a direct engagement with approximately 7,000 mobile retailers across 100 cities. It not only engages with the distribution channel, but also with the retail channel, which has a direct connect with the consumer.
The other part of the consumer business is on the IT channel front. With both these channels, WDC has a strong engagement. It has a three-pronged strategy for engaging with the channel partners. First is constant communication, the second is consistent training, and the third is to reward their performance. Referring to constant communication, WDC builds multiple channels to interact with them on a regular basis. It undertakes face-to-face training as well, but it is one of the few companies in the technology industry which looks at how the channel is behaving, what they are comfortable with and then introduce technology for training programmes. For the mobile retail channel, WDC has a specific training programme through an app called ‘Tech Talks’. It is an app-based training module, which can be availed in Hindi, English and Tamil. Approximately 2,000 retailers get trained on it every quarter.
WDC also has a rewards programme for sub-distributors. A new programme called ‘Sandisk League of Heroes’ has been launched. There are about top 65 partners which help them cover the retailers who do redistribution.
“WDC also runs consumer programmes and promotions. On the commercial side, there is a slightly different model. The IT channel partners and the surveillance channel partners are spread across the country. The surveillance channel partner ecosystem in this country, depending on whom you talk to, will give us a number between 15,000 to 25,000. That’s the level at which they are spread across the country. People who are deploying surveillance solution; we call them surveillance system integrators,” adds Chelliah.
“It could be the system integrator for big projects, but there are several small projects, because India is a land of small businesses. Here the onus is on us to engage with them directly and give them the right proposition. Why is it important? Let’s say someone is deploying surveillance solution for office use. They may buy the best cameras, the best DVR, but the most important aspect is going to be surveillance storage. You can’t get away with a regular hard disk. You need to put a surveillance hard disk and it is also important to consider whether the right amount of storage is in place, otherwise incident history may not be retrieved. You would have lost the data. Thus, it is important to understand and recommend the right product, but not many system integrators do it effectively. To address this, WDC has created an app to enable its partners calculate to the storage requirement. This app is available for both, Android and iOS platforms,” says Chelliah.
Traditionally most companies used emails for communication, but WDC realised that it is not going to work in a market like India. For My WD program, WDC enabled partner communication using the WhatsApp Business platform. The company has also created a similar one for the IT channel focused on SSDs.
“India is important to us not just from a business perspective, but also as a resource pool. Globally, it is one of the largest R&D sites for us. We have close to 2,700 employees based out of India of which almost 90 per cent of the employees are involved in technical R&D. Thus, India has been instrumental to roll out some of break-through products. WDC’s offering of one terabyte on the USB is conceptualised out of India. The 512 gigabyte micro SD card is also conceptualised and designed out of India, so India adds a lot of value to us from every perspective,” concludes Wani.
| Partner Speak |
 Kapal Pansari, Director, RP tech India
Tell us about your growth story as a leading solutions provider in the country, and your areas of expertise? What efforts are being put to stay relevant in this digital disruption era? How long have you been associated with Western Digital, and what has been Western Digital’s contribution in your growth? Please share some use-cases which highlight how you, in collaboration with Western Digital, have been able to offer an enhanced solution for the end customers How is the Western Digital Partner Program benefiting you in addressing customer requirements? What kind of support do you receive from Western Digital in terms of building capabilities and competencies? |
| Partner Speak |
 Mohit Jain, Vice President, GCC – APAC , Tech Data
Tell us about your growth story as a leading solutions provider in the country, and what are your areas of expertise? We operate as a centralised solutions factory, bringing together the right solution architects and specialists for our customers’ needs, so they can expect to work with a single point of contact and receive a consistently high level of attention. Additionally, we leverage Tech Data’s full suite of resources including access to credit lines, our supply chain, guided pricing, sales support and industry perspective to fully support our partners throughout the sales cycle. What efforts are being put to stay relevant in this digital disruption era? How long have you been associated with Western Digital, and what has been Western Digital’s contribution to your growth? Please share some use-cases that highlight how you, in collaboration with Western Digital, have been able to offer enhanced solutions for end customers How is the Western Digital Partner Program benefiting you in addressing customer requirements? |
| Partner Speak |
 S Ramani, Managing Director, India, Avnet
Tell us about your growth story as a leading solutions provider in the country, and your areas of expertise IoT is one of the most important growth areas for Avnet. While there is vast value in IoT projects, most organisations struggle to get their projects off the ground due to the complexity of such implementations. Avnet simplifies the complexity of IoT by bringing everything together for our customers – offering an extensive ecosystem as well as both hardware and software expertise to provide our customers with rapid design, development and deployment capabilities to bring IoT to life. What efforts are being put to stay relevant in this digital disruption era? We can now manage customers’ IoT data on our platform and provide them with analytics capabilities. We also have a new partner program that brings together a network of experts, tools and resources to give our customers what they need to bring their products to market. We can now help customers put the required pieces of IoT together: the device, the gateway, the network, the cloud, the applications and the artificial intelligence that brings them the insights from all of the connected devices. Avnet has also recently launched an IoT Partner Program designed to provide developers with a place to build complete IoT solutions, enabling them to scale their business in a quick and cost-effective manner. Using Avnet’s IoT Connect platform, developers can seamlessly connect devices that address both the software and hardware needs of IoT solutions. How long have you been associated with Western Digital, and what has been Western Digital’s contribution to your growth?Avnet India has been working closely with Western Digital OEM and enterprise team for many years now. The business from WDC products in India has been consistently increasing YoY at high CAGR. Please share some use-cases that highlight how you, in collaboration with Western Digital, have been able to offer enhanced solutions for end customers What kind of support do you receive from Western Digital in terms of building capabilities and competencies? |
| Partner Speak |
 Devinder Singh, Director – APAC, ADI
Tell us about your growth story as a leading solutions provider in the country, and your areas of expertise What efforts are being put to stay relevant in this digital disruption era? At the same time, we are also focused on delivering our expert advice every day on products and specific individual project needs. Our project registration programme helps our customers win more bids and assists with systems design for installations and large projects. We also host seminars and training events year-round, including the ADI Expos Series. For how long have you been associated with Western Digital, and what has been Western Digital’s contribution to your growth? Please share some use-cases that highlight how you, in collaboration with Western Digital, have been able to offer enhanced solutions for end customers How is Western Digital Partner Program benefiting you in addressing the customer requirements? |
| Partner Speak |
 Akhil Singh, Director, Avook Global
Tell us about your growth story as a leading solution provider and your area of expertise What are your efforts to stay relevant in the digital What is your market observation on Western Digital 1TB MicroSD card? How long you have been associated with Western Digital? How has Western Digital contributed to your growth? How are Western Digital’s partner programmes benefitting your business? What sort of support are you receiving from Western Digital in building your capability and competencies? |
