At its What's Next Western Digital event held today at The Ritz-Carlton San Francisco, Western Digital Corp. detailed its mission to unlock the potential of data by harnessing the possibility to use it. In a series of keynotes delivered by company leaders, Western Digital also unveiled breakthrough HDD and Flash innovations inspired by the ways individuals and businesses use data to create what's next.

In his opening remarks, David Goeckeler, CEO of Western Digital, commented on the rapidly expanding market that stems from modern computing. The growth of the cloud, the explosion of connected intelligent devices, and the ever-expanding amount of digital information created with these devices each day around the world, all demand more and more storage capacity.

"Everything we do starts with the belief in human potential as it intersects digital innovation and in turn, creates possibility," said Goeckeler. "Inspired by the many ways in which our customers use data and empowered by our strong go-to-market engine, we uniquely address the broad storage needs of our diverse customers, at any scale - from the smallest intelligent devices to the largest public clouds."

Joined onstage by partners including AMD, Intel and Microsoft, Rob Soderbery, EVP and GM of the Flash Business Unit at Western Digital, reinforced the company's commitment to deliver the purpose-built solutions that power the most important and exciting digital applications in the world today.

"Innovating into the future starts with the right tools. We know that when people are given the tools to push boundaries, they are unstoppable," said Soderbery. "From autonomous cars, artificial intelligence and augmented reality to computing, streaming and gaming, our flash products help to fuel our customers' potential and allow them to perform at their best."

EVP and GM of the HDD Business Unit, Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, addressed the changing economics of the data center and introduced the industry's first 22TB CMR and 26TB UltraSMR HDDs, built upon the foundation of a series of significant innovations cultivated over decades. In conversation with Dropbox, he illustrated Western Digital's commitment to be a partner to cloud customers by delivering the innovations they need to achieve their goals.

"As the areal density leader in the HDD industry, intentional innovation that delivers TCO for our customers is our greatest responsibility," said Gorakhpurwalla. "We know that data is our customers' most valuable asset, and we bring together the brightest minds to develop solutions for today's exponential rate of data creation to enable deeper connections, new breakthroughs and smarter decisions."

New Product Innovations

Building on the expertise cultivated over 50 years of creating industry-leading technologies, Western Digital also introduced new flash and HDD products for cloud, client and consumer customers.

• The Cloud: Western Digital unleashed powerful new data storage solutions for cloud customers, including the industry's first 22TB CMR and 26TB UltraSMR HDDs, and a new family of high-capacity PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSDs to help them design tiered-storage solutions more efficiently, and generate more value out of their infrastructure to help their customers' data thrive.
• The Way We Work Now: The new PCIe Gen4 Western Digital PC SN740 NVMe SSD addresses the unique needs of the hybrid workforce and elevates the computing experience with sequential read speeds up to 5,150MB/s in a thin, light, low-power design.
• Creativity: Western Digital introduced the new SanDisk Professional PRO-BLADE Modular SSD Ecosystem. Designed to meet the demands of capturing, transferring and preserving increasingly higher resolution content, the PRO-BLADE solutions enable professionals to save hours on transfers, save money for equivalent capacity, and reduce the volume and weight of their gear.
• Gaming: Western Digital unveiled two additions to its award-winning WD_BLACK gaming portfolio. Designed with performance and style in mind, the new WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD and WD_BLACK P40 Game Drive SSD, offer gamers more options to elevate their gaming experience so they can play at their best.