MANILA,
Philippines – January 23, 2012 – WD®,
a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company, announced an expansion of
its product portfolio addressing small- and medium-sized businesses
with the addition of network backup software and appliances from
Arkeia® Software, Inc., a privately held data protection company
based in Carlsbad, Calif., recently acquired by WD. WD also announced
that the Arkeia Network Backup version 10.0 software, for which a
release candidate was delivered in Dec. 2012, becomes generally
available (http://www.arkeia.com/new-in-v100)
today.
“Arkeia’s products expand WD’s growing product portfolio
of solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses,” said Jim
Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD’s Branded
and CE products. “SMB organizations are managing ever-growing
volumes of critical business data, which need to be stored, shared
and secured. Our easy-to-manage small storage server, WD Sentinel™
DX4000, provides backup and storage centralization capabilities for
small businesses and workgroups, while Arkeia’s network backup
software provides a more feature-rich data-protection solution for
larger SMB customers.”
Arkeia’s software, appliances and virtual appliances back up
data to disk, tape and cloud storage. The company’s patented
Progressive Deduplication™ technology speeds hybrid-cloud backup by
reducing the bandwidth necessary to replicate backup sets over wide
area networks. Arkeia sells its products worldwide through resellers
and managed service providers.
The acquisition was completed through a merger transaction,
encompassing all of the employees, technology and products of Arkeia.
Arkeia will be integrated into WD’s Branded Products SMB unit and
the products initially will retain the Arkeia name. WD will support
all Arkeia customers on current maintenance and plans to retain both
Arkeia’s software and appliance product lines. Financial terms of
the transaction were not disclosed.
“Joining WD gives the Arkeia team a great opportunity to
accelerate adoption of Arkeia’s innovative technologies and
products,” said Bill Evans, senior director of worldwide software
marketing at WD and former CEO of Arkeia Software. “The Arkeia team
is delighted to be a part of WD. WD has chosen an ideal moment to
invest in this critical product category as backup-to-disk solutions
accelerate their displacement of backup-to-tape. WD’s financial
strength, engineering excellence and organizational discipline will
take Arkeia’s products and customers to the next level.”
Arkeia Network Backup v10.0 General Availability
Arkeia Network Backup v10.0 enables hybrid cloud backups by
allowing administrators to combine physical media and Internet
transport to replicate backup sets to or from remote cloud storage.
Leveraging Arkeia’s advanced Progressive Deduplication technology;
Arkeia Network Backup v10.0 permits SMB organizations to protect
large data volumes in the cloud without incurring high monthly
bandwidth charges. By allowing large backup sets to be moved on
physical media and small backup sets to be sent over the wire, Arkeia
makes it practical to replicate backup sets from a LAN to remote
cloud storage for an inexpensive, tape-free alternative to off-site
backup and recovery. More information can be found at: www.wd.com
and www.arkeia.com.
About WD
Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC), Irvine, Calif., is a global
provider of products and services that empower people to create,
manage, experience and preserve digital content. Its companies design
and manufacture storage devices, networking equipment and home
entertainment products under the WD, HGST and G-Technology brands.
Visit the Investor section of the company's website
(www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and
investor information.
This press release contains
forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking
statements include statements concerning the anticipated benefits of
the Arkeia acquisition and management’s anticipated plans and
strategies for the Arkeia business. These forward-looking statements
are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to
risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ
materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking
statements, including the possibility that the expected benefits of
the acquisition may not materialize as expected; failure to
successfully integrate Arkeia’s products, capabilities and
employees with WD; and other risks and uncertainties listed in the
company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the
“SEC”), including the company’s recent Form 10-Q filed with the
SEC on Nov. 2, 2012, to which your attention is directed. Readers are
cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking
statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and the company
undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements
to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.
Western Digital, WD, the WD logo and Arkeia are
registered trademarks in the U.S. and other countries; WD Sentinel
and Progressive Deduplication are trademarks of Western Digital
Technologies, Inc.
