Advancing AI-ready storage infrastructure for India’s expanding data centre ecosystem

OWAIS MOHAMMED
SALES DIRECTOR - INDIA, THE MIDDLE EAST, AND AFRICA, WESTERN DIGITAL

“At our core, WD is focused on enabling infrastructure that keeps pace with the exploding scale of AI and cloud-driven data growth. Data centre capacity today is not just about raw compute; it is about delivering reliable, efficient storage at scale, fundamental to the AI ecosystem. This is reflected in our customer-centric roadmap, reoriented around technology innovations that deliver capacity, performance and efficiency across workloads. At our recent Innovation Day, we highlighted this strategy with the world’s highest capacity 40TB UltraSMR ePMR HDD, now in hyperscale qualification with ramp production planned later this year. We also outlined a clear path toward 60TB ePMR and ultimately 100TB+ HAMR capacities estimated by 2029. Offering both ePMR and HAMR in parallel allows data centre partners to anticipate capacity growth without disruptive redesigns, providing predictability in capacity planning and economics as AI workloads consume, generate and retain ever-larger data sets.

Beyond capacity scale, we are focused on performance- or power-optimised drives that improve efficiency and total cost of ownership, enabling operators to scale reliably while optimising bandwidth or energy efficiency depending on workload requirements.

We see India steadily evolving into a strategic node in the global AI and data centre ecosystem, supported by rapid growth in domestic data centre capacity and expanding adoption of cloud and AI-led workloads. As these workloads scale, they drive demand for infrastructure that supports compute intensity while enabling the ability to store, access and retain massive volumes of data over time. Approximately 80% of data in data centres is stored on HDDs, underscoring the importance of scalable, high-capacity storage across the AI lifecycle. India’s combination of engineering talent, market scale and an expanding data centre footprint positions it to support domestic digital growth and global data workflows, particularly in storage and long-term data retention at scale.

India’s emergence as a global data centre hub will be driven by deep partnerships across cloud, core and edge ecosystems. Collaboration with global and local cloud service providers and large data centre operators enables co-innovation around capacity density, performance and power efficiency, ensuring solutions align with real-world deployment needs and long-term scalability. Technology and platform partnerships that reduce integration complexity are equally important, extending hyperscale storage economics into broader enterprise environments without disruptive architectural changes. Together, these partnerships support scalable, resilient and AI-ready data centre infrastructure aligned with evolving AI workloads.”