Western Digital begins sampling of its 20TB SMR and 18TB CMR hard disk drives, to help scale data centers for zettabyte age

Western Digital announces that it has started shipping its high-capacity HDD samples to enterprise OEMs and hyperscale customers worldwide, so that users can efficiently scale their data centers for the zettabyte era.

The 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR HDDs and 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDDs, first previewed in June 2019, and announced in September 2019, feature its initial commercial implementation of energy-assisted magnetic recording technology on a nine-disk platform, enabling customers to more efficiently provision and scale their data center environments with improved total cost of ownership.

Optimized to deliver improved capacity and low TCO, the Ultrastar DC HC600 series provides unprecedented capacity capability by harnessing two core complementary technologies: HelioSeal technology and host-managed SMR (HM-SMR). These field-proven technologies provide the foundation for delivering efficiency, quality and reliable performance required by cloud and hyperscale data centers. 

Unlike CMR drives, HM-SMR drives are not drop-in replacements for traditional drives and require system software modifications that take advantage of the new command sets to ensure data is written sequentially to the drive. This software investment helps yield cost-efficient storage solutions.

With zettabyte-scale data growth, the need for higher-capacity data storage across a broad spectrum of applications and workloads can be reliably met only with high capacity enterprise HDDs. 

The capacities of Western Digital’s Ultrastar 20TB SMR and 18TB CMR HelioSeal HDDs enable customers to deploy up to 22 percent fewer racks and reduce their TCO by up to 11 percent, along with the corresponding reductions in power consumption, cooling costs, and data center infrastructure needs when compared with 14TB CMR HDDs.

Western Digital achieves high areal density performance in these drives through the innovative use of energy-assisted magnetic recording. Together with the company’s HelioSeal and SMR technologies, triple-stage micro actuation and 9-disk platform, the energy-assisted recording technology provides an integrated solution, resulting in the dramatic gain in drive capacities.

“The market outlook for capacity-optimized enterprise HDDs remains very positive as IDC expects petabytes shipped to hyperscale cloud data centers and for OEM storage systems and servers to grow at a combined compound annual growth rate of 28 percent through 2023,” said Ed Burns, Research Director, HDD and Storage Technologies at IDC. “Western Digital’s new 20TB and 18TB HDDs should make a compelling case for customers to transition to higher capacity points as they seek greater storage and energy efficiencies in the near-term while building more cost-effective and scalable infrastructures for the future.”

“Delivering samples of our Ultrastar 20TB SMR and 18TB CMR HDDs marks a significant milestone for Western Digital—demonstrating our enduring commitment to the open SMR-based ecosystem, as well as our strong track record of innovation to provide great value for our customers,” said Phil Bullinger, senior vice president and general manager of Western Digital’s Data Center Business Unit. “These new HDDs deliver unsurpassed capacity and are our first to leverage energy-assisted magnetic recording technology, enabling new levels of data center efficiency and driving value creation from data at scale.”

Western Digital is now sampling the 20TB Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR HDD and the 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDD, with qualification and volume shipments expected in the first half of next year.

Global enterprise external OEM storage systems market revenue grows by a mere 1.3 percent for the third quarter, IDC reveals

According to IDC Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, global spending on enterprise external OEM storage systems grew 1.3 percent year over year to US$6.6 billion during the third quarter of this year. 

Total external OEM storage capacity shipments were up 6.8 percent year over year to 17.3 exabytes during the quarter. Revenue generated by the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) selling directly to hyperscale data centers declined 6.8 percent year over year in the thrid quarter this year to $5.8 billion. 

Total market capacity shipments (External OEM + ODM Direct + Server-Based Storage) declined 13.9 percent to 98.8 exabytes.

Dell Technologies was the largest enterprise external OEM storage systems supplier during the quarter, accounting for 31.5 percent of global revenue. NetApp and HPE/New H3C Group tied for second with 9.9 percent and 9.6 percent of the market, respectively. 

Huawei, Hitachi, and IBM tied for the fourth position with revenue shares of 7.0 percent, 6.2 percent and 6.0 percent, respectively. Despite growing and gaining market share during the third quarter, Pure Storage and Lenovo did not finish among the top 5 companies. 

The total All Flash Array (AFA) market generated $2.58 billion in revenue during the quarter, up 11.7 percent year over year. The Hybrid Flash Array (HFA) market was worth slightly less than $2.54 billion in revenue, down 1.7 percent from the third quarter last year. 

On a geographic basis, Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) grew the fastest of any region, up 12.5 percent year over year. Japan grew 2.5 percent; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) was down 1.0 percent; and the Americas declined 2.7 percent. China as a standalone country grew 20.4 percent year over year in the third quarter this year.

Intel opposes Qualcomm’s appeal in US District Court; files brief supporting FTC

Intel files a brief supporting the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and opposing Qualcomm’s appeal of the judgment rendered in May against Qualcomm by the United States District Court, Northern District of California. 

The District Court found that “Qualcomm’s licensing practices have strangled competition in the CDMA and premium LTE modem chip markets for years, and harmed rivals, OEMs and end consumers.” The District Court also found that Qualcomm’s conduct “unfairly tends to destroy competition itself.”

Intel agrees with the District Court’s findings. Intel suffered the brunt of Qualcomm’s anticompetitive behavior, was denied opportunities in the modem market, was prevented from making sales to customers and was forced to sell at prices artificially skewed by Qualcomm. 

Qualcomm would have you believe that its position in the market today — as the last surviving U.S. supplier of premium modem chips — is due to its “ingenuity and business acumen,” and that its rivals in the market failed simply because “they did not offer good enough chips at low enough prices.” This is simply not true.

Instead, as detailed in the District Court’s opinion and in our brief, Qualcomm maintained its monopoly through a brazen scheme carefully crafted and implemented over many years. This scheme consists of a web of anticompetitive conduct designed to allow Qualcomm to coerce customers, tilt the competitive playing field and exclude competitors, all the while shielding itself from legal scrutiny and capturing billions in unlawful gains.

The victims were Qualcomm’s own customers (original equipment manufacturers or OEMs), the long list of competitors it forced out of the modem chip market, including Intel, and ultimately consumers. 

Intel fought for nearly a decade to build a profitable modem chip business, and invested billions, hired thousands, acquired two companies and built innovative products that eventually made their way into Apple’s iPhones, including the most recently released iPhone 11. 

But when all was said and done, Intel could not overcome the artificial and insurmountable barriers to fair competition created by Qualcomm’s scheme and was forced to exit the market this year.

“As I have pointed out before, the District Court’s decision finding Qualcomm violated the antitrust laws comes on the heels of governmental entities around the globe reaching the same conclusion,” wrote Steven R. Rodgers is executive vice president and general counsel at Intel, in a post. “As a result of its anticompetitive practices, Qualcomm has been fined nearly $1 billion in China, $850 million in Korea, $1.2 billion by the European Commission and $773 million in Taiwan (later reduced in settlement). The FTC, however, did not seek monetary relief. Instead, it sought injunctive relief to prevent Qualcomm from continuing to engage in its unlawful conduct.”

Among other things, the District Court prohibited Qualcomm from continuing to implement the central component of its scheme, its coercive “no license, no chips” (NLNC) policy. Under the policy, Qualcomm cuts off handset OEMs’ purchases of modem chips unless they enter into a patent license agreement on Qualcomm’s terms. These onerous, one-sided terms enable Qualcomm to artificially lower the price of its modems while simultaneously inflating customers’ costs of using modem chips manufactured by competitors, like Intel, by charging royalties as large as the price of the modems themselves. 

The District Court concluded that the NLNC policy, together with other anticompetitive behavior on Qualcomm’s part, unlawfully distorted and, in fact, destroyed the competitive playing field.

The world benefits from fair competition in the wireless technology market. Given the importance of wireless technology to the future of connected computing, including the revolutionary promise of 5G, we strongly support the efforts of the FTC and other law enforcement agencies to require Qualcomm to obey the laws and compete on a level playing field.

“We hope our amicus brief will help in clarifying the full extent of the harm that Qualcomm’s unlawful behavior has caused and will continue to cause if left unchecked,” Stevans added.

Syncron Uptime strengthens manufacturers’ transition from after sales-service to products-as-a-service

Syncron launched its Syncron Uptime offering that uses Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to analyze real-time sensor data, predict failures, prescribe optimized maintenance actions and ultimately maximize product uptime.

Servitization, which is the transformation from selling products to selling products-as-a-service, has ushered in a new generation of customers that prefers access over ownership. This increasingly popular consumption preference is driving original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to shift from product-centric to service-centric business models.

When implementing an after-sales service strategy that is centered on maximized product uptime, OEMs commonly encounter a small minority of the overall mechanical failures that contribute to unplanned downtime follow a pattern that is correlated to time and/or usage, while the overwhelming majority are random occurrences. 

As a result, present approach to preventive maintenance adds to increased total cost of ownership without effectively improving availability and uptime. The only way to improve product uptime without increasing risk, plus improving cost effectiveness, is to look for subtle symptoms and pre-cursors leading up to the point of failure.

To overcome random, symptom-based failures, OEMs have been investing heavily in sensors and IoT, collecting massive amounts of data. However, it is impossible to manually manage or analyze this data in any beneficial way. The only solution is to leverage modern machine earning and artificialiIntelligence technologies – mathematical algorithms that can find the subtle patterns to provide the earliest possible indications of anomalies and failure patterns.

Manufacturers are focused on designing products that are easier and safer to operate. However, this has led to increased complexity when it comes to servicing and maintaining newer equipment. Simultaneously, the baby boomer generation is retiring and taking critical, expert knowledge with them, leaving OEMs struggling to find trained service technicians and engineers who can effectively troubleshoot and diagnose problems based on early symptoms, which can lead to a reduction in first-time fix rates.

Manufacturers’ organizational structures are designed for product-centric approach, treating sales of products, spare parts and service as separate functions, which has led to disparate IT systems and KPIs. Servitization, however, requires a new way of thinking where accountability does not end after a product sale, instead continuing throughout a product’s entire lifecycle. OEMs will be contract-bound for pre-defined performance measures that carry incentives and penalties based on customer outcomes.

Syncron Uptime has been designed to overcome these challenges, enabling OEMs to maximize product uptime cost effectively. With this new, enterprise software solution users can combine OEMs’ investments in IoT and sensor data with machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect anomalies and predict failures, leading to optimized maintenance for every complex machine in the field and improving product uptime and maintenance costs. 

It also captures knowledge and best practices for troubleshooting products with the earliest and smallest indications of deterioration in performance, increasing field service productivity and improving first-time fix rates.

The offering breaks down data and organizational siloes to enable coordination between operations, field service management and service parts planning, providing a single source of truth to all stakeholders. It also integrates with predictive maintenance work requests with field service systems and Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) to make the best decisions for both the business and end customers, while maximizing product uptime and improving the overall customer experience.

IDC reports 0.8 percent rise in global smartphone shipments in third quarter, as Huawei went full steam in China

Worldwide smartphone shipments increased 0.8 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2019 after seven quarters of decline, according to new data released Thursday by research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. In total, companies shipped a total 358.3 million smartphones during the quarter, which was up 8.1 percent from the previous quarter and enough to return the industry to positive growth. 

Digging into the growth areas, India led emerging markets in total, which together were responsible for propelling worldwide growth, mainly from the rise of Chinese brands. In China, greater consolidation toward the top 5 brands was the main trend in the quarter. 

The top Chinese brands all increased their local shipments in preparation for 11.11 or "Singles' Day," the Chinese equivalent of Black Friday for shopping in the U.S. 

Samsung gained share in 3Q19 with annual growth of 8.3 percent on the back of the Galaxy Note 10 launch in August and increased A series volumes, with a total of 78.2 million smartphones shipped. The lower-end to midrange A series in particular helped to fill in the gaps left behind by Huawei. 

Huawei shipped higher volumes than expected as it shifted focus to its domestic market, particularly in lower-tier cities, and increased inventories given the unknown future with Google Mobile services. 

While a sentiment of nationalism has helped to bolster Huawei in China, solid relationships with the local channel players has been key, offering favorable distributor terms and a well-rounded product portfolio. Nevertheless, there will be challenges ahead with 4G inventory to clear while consumers wait for affordable 5G products to hit the market. 

Apple shipped 46.6 million iPhones in the third quarter this year, which was a slight decline year over year but still better than most expectations. Apple continues to sell some refurbished iPhones via its own channels, which sustain and possibly grow the installed base, but also impact iPhone revenues. Newer iPhones, specifically the iPhone 11s and XR, did very well this quarter, capturing strong share in important markets like the U.S. and Western Europe. 

Xiaomi for the first time saw less than a third of its shipments delivered domestically in China, which was second to India in volume. Domestically, despite its launch of the CC series to appeal to young female consumers, shipments declined under pressure from Huawei. 

The runway was clearer for Xiaomi in India, however, where it strengthened its offline presence by expanding its sales network via the Mi Store and Mi Preferred Partners. 

OPPO also focused its attention outside of China as it approached the tipping point of nearly half of its shipments outside of China with domestic shipments focused on the Reno series and the A9. India experienced the strongest momentum internationally where the Reno series helped complete its product portfolio with higher-end offerings while the online-exclusive K series strengthened its online presence. 

"Despite facing challenges across many international markets, Huawei doubled down on China in the third quarter," said Melissa Chau, associate research director with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. "Samsung benefited the most internationally from Huawei's woes, ramping up the more affordable A series, while in China the other domestic competitors felt the heat from Huawei." 

"The market returning to positive growth shows the resilience of this industry as well as the ongoing demand for mobile phones, all in the face of many global macroeconomic challenges," said Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. "The number of factors in play for competition are incredible. It is clear Huawei continues to make big gains in China, which remains the world's largest market. Apple beat many expectations and is driving strong volumes in mature markets that face equally challenging headwinds. And most importantly, the top 5 OEMs accounted for more than 70 percent of the world's smartphone shipments for the first time ever this quarter. The industry and vendor landscape is still changing but the trend of consolidation is ramping along with it."

Altran aligns with Baicells to create multi-platform 5G RAN offering to help OEMs and operators monetize 5G faster

Altran has collaborated with Baicells to developed a 5G RAN multiplatform solution using Altran’s decades of wireless expertise. As the 5G ecosystem rapidly expands, a number of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are collaborating with Altran to design and deliver solutions that leverage 5G technology for both operators and enterprises. 

Baicells, a cloud-based 4G/5G wireless solutions provider, is the latest OEM to select Altran’s 5G RAN software framework. With Altran’s expertise, Baicells will fast track its 5G RAN solution to support several key markets, including telecommunications, industrial, enterprise and private networks. 

5G is expected to achieve economies of scale over the next two to three years, lowering costs across network architecture. As such, RAN is a critical piece of infrastructure to deliver monetizable use cases. Altran’s innovative 5G RAN software framework enables OEMs to accelerate product development and support deployment roadmaps for operators at a reduced cost. 

The framework uses a single software package that works across both millimeter wave and sub-6GHz for both non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) modes, regardless of platform type. This significantly reduces the cost of maintenance for software releases across different platforms. 

The 5G RAN framework leverages Altran’s decades of wireless expertise, including stack development for 2G, 3G and 4G networks, to support multiple platforms and use cases. It is fully compliant with 3GPP, O-RAN, Open RAN and service control functions (SCF) for femto application platform interface (FAPI) and network FAPI (nFAPI) interfacing, making it interoperable with multiple physical layer (PHY) and remote radio unit (RRU) providers and ecosystems.

“We worked closely with Baicells to create a differentiated 5G RAN solution that reflects the company’s commitment to innovation, while also ensuring that it is cost-effective for operators,” said Dominique Cerutti, chairman and chief executive officer of Altran. “Operators are looking to recoup their investments in 5G infrastructure faster, and the ability to quickly deploy multiple 5G use cases will be critical for achieving a good ROI. To achieve successful 5G deployments, robust RAN solutions will be key.”