Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, Aug 31, 2007
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Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, Aug 31, 2007 ePaper |
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Info-Tech
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Interview Energy-efficient hard drives from Western Digital
R. Savitha Pune Aug 30 Western Digital has announced a new line of hard drives designed with energy efficiency in mind. These hard drives are estimated to consume almost 40 per cent less power than normal drives. According to WD, each of these drives will save about 13.8 kg of carbon dioxide per year. For a large data centre, such as a bank, savings could be around 248 tonnes of carbon a year. The first of these 3.5 inch hard drives, the 1TB Caviar GP, hit the global market in July, followed by the 1TB desk-to-pc channel shipment. Mr Sharad Srivastava, Director - Sales (India and South Asia), talks to Business Line about the products and the strategy. What is the potential for green drives in the Indian market? What is the sales target? Green Power Hard Drives consume almost 40 per cent less power than normal drives. In India where power is an issue in terms of demand and supply chain, these drives will conserve power and provide an increased life to power-generation equipment such as inverters and generators. What is the marketing strategy for this? Western Digital’s market strategy consists of a distributor network. We have channel partners who are responsible for the distribution of our products across India. Additionally, we have an all-inclusive education campaign and service support set-up in India. We have also implemented a three-segment channel model, based on the customer profile and appointed strategic distributors, to address the market. In an enhancement to its channel strategy recently, WD’s volume distribution segment has been further divided into the regional and up-country markets to address resellers and small SI/assemblers. This distributor network is supported by our warranty replacement program – WD Express. Where is the drive being manufactured? The green drives are being manufactured in WD factory located in Malaysia and Thailand. For the domestic market too, the drives will be shipped from the manufacturing units in Malaysia and Thailand. As per our Q4 results, unit shipments have grown 32 per cent from 73.3 million in the last fiscal year (FY06) to 96.5 million in FY07. Would you be looking at a manufacturing facility here? The decision to set up a manufacturing unit depends not only on volumes but also factors such as the availability of a multiple specialised components, proximity to them etc. WD’s manufacturing bases in Thailand and Malaysia are currently well equipped to handle the global demand for our hard drives. As a result, we do not have any plans to set up a manufacturing facility in India right now. Our key target markets are consumer electronics and audio video applications segments including personal video recorders and digital video recorders.
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