WD expands its relationship with one of the longest-standing specialist storage distributors in the UK to include business storage solutions

UK, January 9th, 2013 - WD®, a Western Digital company and world leader in digital storage solutions, today announced the expansion of its agreement with storage distributor Hammer to resell WD Sentinel™ ultra-compact unified NAS storage solutions and WD Arkeia™ business network backup products and solutions in the UK and Nordics. Hammer is the sole distributor for the WD Arkeia series in the UK.

"Our goal is to provide value to small- and medium-sized organisations with our WD Arkeia and WD Sentinel product range and we believe that Hammer is the right partner to help us achieve this in the UK," says Fred Milon, EMEA Sales Director for WD.

"This expansion reinforces our market position as a specialist in advanced technology solutions for businesses. It equally reinforces our commitment to working hand in hand with our partners, to whom we strive to offer the best range of solutions with which they can respond effectively and easily to the demands of the current market, all backed by our unique value-add approach," said James Ward, Hammer's Managing Director. "Our UK and Nordics sales teams are looking forward to the opportunity to expand their WD offering to customers, both new and established," he said.

WD Arkeia professional range of solutions offer enterprise-class backup capabilities-features, platform support, and web-based interface-required by small and medium businesses without the complexity that would require a team of software administrators to deploy. The award-winning solutions safeguard more than 10,000 networks for customers in 100 countries. These appliances are ideal for organizations that require high reliability, but have minimal resources for software installation and maintenance. Models range from compact, quiet, energy-efficient, desktop devices to high-performance, field-upgradeable, rack-mounted units. With matched processor, memory and storage, coupled with an optimised Linux operating system, each appliance provides a carefully tuned platform for WD Arkeia software. This integration makes deployment rapid, operation reliable and management easy.

The WD Sentinel X-Series Network Storage Servers and the WD Sentinel S-Series Ultra-compact Storage Plus Servers provide secure centralised storage, complete data protection, and remote file access, protecting data so it can be securely accessed from anywhere. These powerful, reliable and affordable servers are ideal for small businesses and workgroups that are looking for an ultra-compact unified storage solution, with an integrated iSCSI SAN, NAS and server-based backup technology. Featuring hard drives optimised for reliability, quality and performance, Intel® processors and Microsoft® operating systems, the WD Sentinel servers provide secure access to data and line of business applications, even when working remotely.

Hammer has the in-house resources to train and certify partners on both the WD Arkeia and WD Sentinel product range as the first step toward taking full advantage of the benefits of the WD Business partnership programme.

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 Hammer
Hammer is a leading specialist storage distributor. Its success is based on a total commitment to storage, combined with unrivalled technical knowledge and customer service quality in providing data storage for any storage requirement. Recognised for its commitment to innovation, Hammer works closely with selected world-class vendors and market-leading resellers and integrators. It also develops and provides flexible and bespoke storage solutions for all markets. Founded in 1991 and a privately owned company, Hammer has its headquarters in Basingstoke, England, with a staff of 150, and has increasing European presence with offices in the Nordics, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, and France. For further information visit the website at www.hammerplc.com.

Western Digital, WD, and the WD logo are  registered trademarks in the U.S. and other countries; WD Sentinel and WD  Arkeia are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and  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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