SAN JOSE, Calif., March 12, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Skyera Inc.
and Western Digital® Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today
announced that Skyera has received strategic funding from Western
Digital Capital as part of its recently announced Series B round of
financing. Western Digital Capital co-invested in the $51 million round as an extension of the
strategic relationship between the two companies that also includes
joint technology development. Western Digital had previously funded
Skyera as its initial outside investor.
"The backing of Western Digital has enabled us to ramp our
business across marketing, sales and engineering which has been
instrumental in creating the industry's most innovative solid-state
solution," said Radoslav Danilak,
chief executive officer of Skyera. "With our skyHawk family of
enterprise solid-state storage systems we are witnessing the next
era of solid-state storage and I strongly believe that having a
close working relationship with Western Digital, the world's top
disk drive vendor, is invaluable as we set out to reshape the
storage landscape."
"One of our primary goals in developing strategic relationships
with technology innovators in the broader storage ecosystem is to
enable customers to develop highly optimized storage solutions that
meet their changing data management needs," said Steve Milligan, president and chief executive
officer, Western Digital. "We see companies like Skyera as offering
a dramatic improvement over traditional approaches to emerging
storage challenges. We will continue to support innovation by
collaborating with customers and partners, and investing in
companies who are addressing today's most exciting storage
opportunities."
Skyera's skyHawk series of enterprise solid-state storage
systems, priced at an industry breakthrough price point of less
than $3 per gigabyte, mark the first
time that the latest generation 19/20nm solid-state technology can
be used as a direct replacement for traditional enterprise hard
disk-based systems.
Skyera's skyHawk solid-state solution has received industry
acclaim as a visionary and innovative product, substantiating
Skyera's approach to mainstream enterprise solid-state storage. Its
SEOS™ solid-state operating system combines hardware, storage and
data management into a unified solution that provides top
performance, cost and power consumption attributes.
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About Skyera
Skyera Inc. is a disruptive provider of
enterprise solid-state storage systems designed to enable a large
class of applications with extraordinarily high performance,
exceptionally lower power consumption and cost effectiveness
relative to existing enterprise storage systems. Founded by the
executives who previously developed the world's most-advanced flash
memory controller, Skyera is backed by key technology and financial
partnerships designed to position it at the forefront of the hyper
growth in the solid-state storage sector. The company was chosen by
Flash Memory Summit as a Best of Show award winner for 2012 in the
category of Most Innovative Flash Memory Enterprise Business
Application. For more information about the company, visit
skyera.com.
About Western Digital Corp.
Western Digital Corp., Irvine,
Calif., is a global provider of products and services that
empower people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital
content. Its subsidiaries 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.
This press release contains forward-looking statements within
the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of
1995. These forward-looking statements include statements
concerning Western Digital's strategic growth activities and the
anticipated benefits of its investment in Skyera. These
forward-looking statements are based on management's current
expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could
cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or
implied in the forward-looking statements, including risks and
uncertainties listed in Western Digital's filings with the
Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including its
recent Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on Feb.
1, 2013, to which your attention is directed. Readers are
cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking
statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and Western
Digital undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking
statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.
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SOURCE Western Digital Corp.