WD® Teams With Promark On Distribution Of Business Storage Solutions

IRVINE, Calif., April 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- WD^®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company and a world leader in digital storage solutions, today announced an agreement with storage distributor Promark Technology to resell WD Sentinel™ ultra-compact storage and server solutions and WD Arkeia™ business network backup solutions. Promark, a premier, U.S.-focused value added distributor (VAD) and wholly-owned subsidiary of Ingram Micro Inc. (NYSE: IM), the world's largest technology distributor and global leader in IT supply-chain and mobile device lifecycle services.    

"Our goal is to provide value to small- and medium-sized organizations with our WD Arkeia and WD Sentinel products and solutions. We believe that Promark, and their network of VARs and systems integrators, is the right distribution partner to help us achieve this in the U.S.," says Tom Gallivan, vice president of sales, WD, Business Storage Solutions.

"This agreement with WD reinforces Promark's market position as a highly-specialized storage distributor that is committed to expanding our vendors' reach and enabling mutual channel partners to successfully market, sell and support the IT industry's most in-demand storage solutions," says Charles Bass, Promark's vice president of vendor relations. "We are pleased to expand our portfolio to include WD's products and solutions and will work together to generate greater demand and deliver more value to our mutual channel partners," he says.

WD Arkeia offers fast, easy-to-use and affordable network backup solutions – software, appliances and virtual appliances – designed to protect both physical and virtual environments. These solutions feature enterprise-class backup capabilities required by small and medium businesses without the complexity that would require a team of software administrators to deploy. Models range from compact, quiet and energy-efficient desktop devices to high-performance, field-upgradeable, rack-mounted units. With matched processor, memory and storage, combined with an optimized Linux operating system, the appliances provide a carefully tuned platform for WD Arkeia software. This integration makes deployment rapid, operation reliable and management easy. The award-winning solutions safeguard more than 10,000 networks for customers in 100 countries.

The WD Sentinel storage appliances leverage proven components to provide reliable operation at an affordable price. The WD Sentinel X-Series network storage servers combine enterprise-grade hard drives, Intel Atom processors and the Microsoft Storage Server Operating system. The WD Sentinel S-Series ultra-compact storage plus servers combine enterprise-grade hard drives, Intel Xeon processors with Windows Server^® 2012 R2 Essentials. These powerful, reliable and affordable servers are ideal for small businesses and workgroups of larger companies that are looking for an ultra-compact storage solution integrating iSCSI SAN, NAS and server-based backup technology. These award-winning solutions have been successfully deployed in over 20,000 businesses worldwide.

As part of its new alliance with Promark, WD will enhance its WD Business Storage Partnership program by adding a robust partner portal that will support partner marketing efforts, deal registration and computer based training. The storage innovator will also leverage Promark's in-house resources to train and certify partners on the WD Arkeia and WD Sentinel solutions and will encourage partners to take full advantage of these new WD programs.

About WD

WD, a Western Digital company, is a long-time innovator and storage industry leader. As a storage technology pacesetter, the company produces reliable, high-performance hard disk drives and solid state drives. These drives are deployed by OEMs and integrators in desktop and mobile computers, enterprise computing systems, embedded systems and consumer electronics applications, as well as by the company in providing its own storage products. WD's leading storage devices and systems, networking products, media players and software solutions empower people around the world to easily save, store, protect, share and experience their content on multiple devices. WD was established in 1970 and is headquartered in Irvine, Calif. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.wd.com.

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.

About Promark Technology

Promark Technology, an Ingram Micro company, is one of the premier value added distributors (VAD) in the United States. Promark's core technology focus is distributing data storage and virtualization products and solutions through a two-tier distribution channel to value added resellers (VARs) and system integrators. Promark leverages its direct relationships with world class technology partners to provide solutions that meet the most demanding needs of its customers. Promark also offers a Public Sector Business Program that helps resellers navigate the government selling process and expand the reach of their Business.  The program provides authorized resellers the ability to leverage Promark's GSA Schedule to market and sell products and solutions into both federal government and state and local organizations.  Promark offers professional services in application integration, backup and recovery, network optimization, storage implementation and disaster recovery. To learn more about Promark Technology call 800.634.0255 or visit www.promarktech.com.

Western Digital, WD, and the WD logo are registered trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries; WD Arkeia, WD Sentinel and Progressive Deduplication are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Intel Atom and Intel Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the US and other countries. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other marks may be mentioned herein that belong to other companies. All other brand and product names mentioned herein are the property of their respective companies. As used for storage capacity, one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.

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SOURCE WD