Storage industry pioneer, Western Digital (WD), will offer a small-office storage server product that includes Microsoft's Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials operating system software.
WD signed the OEM software agreement with Microsoft Corporation to offer a complete storage solution for the small business market.
The resulting product aims to simplify online connection, protection and collaboration for small businesses and the IT services organisations supporting them.
According to WD, fast, dependable, secure access to data and complete backup and recovery capabilities are becoming as vital for SMBs as they are for large businesses.
A study by Forrester Research showed SMBs will outpace the projected IT market growth rate of 7.1 per cent and 53 per cent of SMBs indicated an increase their storage spend.
WD's vice-president of marketing for SMB branded products, Thomas Gallivan, said, “WD will offer storage solutions for small business that provides centralised, online shared storage capable of meeting the storage requirements of the small business owners in today's fast paced business environment." The company most recently announced its latest generation My Book Studio.
