Samsung intros 256GB UFS storage for mobile devices

Samsung Electronics has announced it is now mass producing 256GB embedded memory based on the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard, for next-generation high-end mobile devices. The newly introduced embedded memory features performance for mobile devices that exceeds that of a typical SATA-based SSD for PCs, claimed the company.

"By providing high-density UFS memory that is nearly twice as fast as a SATA SSD for PCs, we will contribute to a paradigm shift within the mobile data storage market," said Joo Sun Choi, executive VP of Samsung's memory sales and marketing. "We are determined to push the competitive edge in premium storage line-ups – OEM NVMe SSDs, external SSDs, and UFS – by moving aggressively to enhance performance and capacity in all three markets."

The new Samsung UFS memory satisfies needs for ultra-fast speeds, large data capacity, and compact chip sizes in high-end smartphones. It is based on the company's most advanced V-NAND flash memory chips and a specially-designed high-performance controller. The UFS memory handles up to 45,000 and 40,000 IOPS for random reading and writing respectively, over two times faster than the 19,000 and 14,000 IOPS of the previous generation of UFS memory, Samsung said.

For sequential reading, the 256GB UFS takes advantage of two lanes of data transfer to move data at up to 850MB/s, which is nearly twice as fast as a typical SATA-based SSD used in PCs, According to Samsung. In terms of sequential writing, it supports up to 260 MB/s, which is approximately three times faster than high-performance external micro SD cards. As a result, the new 256GB UFS memory is capable of supporting seamless Ultra HD video playback and multitasking functionality on large-screen mobile devices, such as watching 4K Ultra HD movies on a split screen, while searching image files or downloading video clips.

In addition, with the advent of next-generation smartphones that support the USB 3.0 interface, users will be able to transfer data much faster between mobile devices. The USB 3.0 interface will allow sending a 5GB-equivalent Full-HD video clip (average 90min. movie size) in 12 seconds. Within this new storage environment, mobile users will get to take full advantage of the performance benefits of Samsung's latest UFS memory.

Using Samsung's advanced memory technology, the new UFS memory chips are extremely compact, even smaller than an external micro SD card, giving greater flexibility to smartphone designers.

Samsung announced availability of its 128 GB UFS memory in February 2015. In only a year, it has doubled the capacity and speed of UFS memory, which should spur further growth of the mobile marketplace. Samsung said it will extend its premium storage line-ups that are based on its advanced V-NAND flash memory including the new 256GB UFS, and increase their production volume in line with increases in global demand.

New data storage method can fit 360TB of data onto a quartz disk for 14 billion years

Researchers at Southampton Univerity (UK) have devised a new technique to digitally store data; a LOT of data, around 360 terabytes of it. And that storage option is permanent.

The breakthrough from the university's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) directs ultrafast laser pulses at a quartz disk to write data within it's 3D structure. Three layers of dots are written in, each just five microns away from the other. They've also developed a read process that involves hitting the disk with another pulse of light and recording its polarisation once it's passed through.

To cut to the chase, the ORC's method will let you store up to 360TB of data on a single disk about the size of your spectacle lens, for 13.8 billion years (at room temperature). To test the method, the team wrote a number of monumental literary works to quartz disks, including the King James Bible, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Newton’s Opticks, and the Magna Carta.

The "Superman memory crystals" as the researchers are calling the written disks are a major step in digital storage, especially in an age where, despite access to cloud options, a lot of users prefer to keep back up copies of data on disk. Not to mention, as Professor Peter Kazansky, from the ORC, says “It is thrilling to think that we have created the technology to preserve documents and information and store it in space for future generations. This technology can secure the last evidence of our civilisation: all we’ve learnt will not be forgotten.”

HPE private clouds get Azure-powered hardware boost

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has teamed up with Microsoft to allow businesses to build private clouds using software that underpins Redmond's Azure cloud platform.

From today HPE will sell a new appliance, the Hyper-Converged 250 for Microsoft CPS Standard, which comes with Windows Server 2012 R2, HPE OneView for Microsoft System Center and Windows Azure Pack.

The software is designed to allow firms to rapidly deploy Windows and Linux-based systems on virtualised infrastructure, which can be managed from a single interface or console.

"Public cloud services, like those Azure provides, are an important aspect of a hybrid cloud strategy and Microsoft Azure blends perfectly with HPE solutions," said Meg Whitman, president and CEO of HPE.

Users of the 250 appliance will also be able to take advantage of Azure-connected services, such as Azure Backup and the disaster recovery offering Azure Site Recovery.

A Hyper-Converged 250 appliance can fit up to four servers with up to 16 nodes in a single 2U chassis. Each node comes with two Intel Xeon E5-2640 v3 or E5-2680 v3 processors, up to 512GB of memory, 2 x 10GbE SFP+ network connectivity and a mix of SAS and SSD or all SAS drives for storage, with capacity depending on configuration.

Dell already offers machines with the same Microsoft Cloud Platform System Standard software package, such as the Dell Hybrid Cloud System - a PowerEdge R730 rack server that comes with Azure Pack, System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

Under a new deal with HPE, Microsoft Azure will be the "preferred public cloud partner" for HPE customers while HPE will serve as a "preferred partner" in providing infrastructure and services for for Microsoft's hybrid cloud offerings. HPE plans to certify an additional 5,000 Azure Cloud Architects to improve integration with Azure for its Enterprise Services customers.

HPE and Microsoft will also create HPE Azure Centers of Excellence in Palo Alto, California and Houston, Texas, that will work on creating "a seamless hybrid cloud experience when leveraging Azure across HPE infrastructure".

Earlier this year HP Enterprise projected that its cloud revenue would be about $3bn in 2015, with annual revenue growth of 20 percent.

Microsoft will join the HPE Composable Infrastructure Partner Program to accelerate innovation for the next-generation infrastructure, such as the HPE Synergy platform, also announced at HPE Discover in London.

Also revealed at Discover were HPE plans to bolster its cloud management offerings, with the announcement of HPE Helion Managed Cloud Broker. The managed service will allow businesses to provision, access, consolidate and securely control services across multiple cloud providers.

Spanning public and private cloud services, the HPE Helion Managed Cloud Broker will support the full HPE Helion portfolio - including HPE Helion Managed Virtual Private Cloud, HPE Helion CloudSystem, and HPE Helion OpenStack - as well as traditional datacenter services supported by VMware, and a range of public cloud providers, including Microsoft Azure and AMAZON Web Services. The HPE Helion Managed Cloud Broker will be generally available in 2016 as a managed service with a "consumption-based model".

Want free Drive storage? Write reviews on Google Maps

Writing reviews on Google Maps can get you upto 1TB of free cloud storage for two years. According to reports, a Reddit user got the offer after becoming a Level 4 local guide on Google Maps. Assuming that Level 4 is the cap for getting free storage, it would mean that you need to acquire 200 points on Google Maps, in order to be eligible for the offer. Points on Google Maps are acquired by writing reviews, uploading photos, correcting wrong information, adding places and answering questions regarding the service.

Adding reviews and comments about places on Google Maps works quite the same way as they do on Zomato, but this added incentive wasn’t heard of, till today. According to the official website, you can become a local guide for Google, and earn points. Earning more than 5 points gets you to Level 2, while Level 3 can be reached by earning over 50 points. Level 4 and 5 can be reached at 200 and 500 points, respectively.

Signing up to be a local guide for Google Maps is free, and gets you early access to new features from Google, along with exclusive invitations to Google-hosted events. You will also have an official Local Guides badge on Google Maps. When signing up, Google will ask you to choose your preferred location. You can start earning points once you sign up and start posting information.

Google Maps has evolved over the years, becoming quite useful for Indian users today. Features like Offline Maps and saving locations have made it even more useful, and the service’s accuracy has also improved a lot. Google also allows third parties like Uber, Ola, and many others to use the Maps service in their apps.

Further, Google allows 15GB of free Drive storage to users, with a monthly charge of $1.99 (approx. Rs. 130) for 100GB of storage, and $9.99 (approx. Rs. 670) for 1TB. There are also options for 10, 20 and 30TB of storage.

You can check out the Reddit thread here.

Flash storage: Is there a tipping point anytime soon?

IBM Flash System 900: Apart from the familiar flash micro drives that will fit on a key fob, this flexible technology flexes to a very large size indeed. Image: IBM

The market for flash is hot and getting hotter. Last month when two of the largest data storage manufacturers, Western Digital and SanDisk announced their plans to merge, they predicted double-digit growth in solid state discs for the next five years and a 10 percent compound annual growth rate in the global NAND flash market.

It is the ability to access, move, and save data quickly that gives flash its appeal. In the past the high cost of flash kept demand down but that's starting to change.

First: the benefits of flash. Like the eponymous DC Comics hero, flash is fast. That speed is one of the reasons for flash's popularity in the finance industry, for example.

But the finance industry doesn't just want its information served up quickly it wants it done reliably too and that is the second factor in flash's success -- it is reliable. Conventional disk drives are built on spinning disks, and spinning disks mean moving parts and moving parts can wear and break. Flash does not have moving parts, only electrical and electronic connections, resulting in tremendous reliability.

Those two factors have broadened flash's appeal in recent years but not enough for flash to come into its own and escape from its niche status. As ever in IT, what has been needed for widespread usage is the third factor: cost.

Flash is still too expensive for general use when compared to conventional disk storage, which offers much higher capacities than flash at a fraction of the cost. Now the signs are that we are going to see that situation changing -- but if the analysts are to be believed, that is not going to happen quickly.

"When you go to refresh your technology, you look at flash and now you think about phasing it in," said Valdis Filks, the expert on flash storage at analyst house Gartner.

But as he explained, this will take some time: "It is only after two or three cycles [of technology upgrades] that most companies can bring in a complete change in technology, like a move to all flash".

These big switches are not things you rush into, he said, so, "when people write things like, 'next year flash is going to take over the world', we know that it just can't happen like that," he said.

According to Filks, you can add to that another issue: people cannot make enough flash. That, said Filks, "is a small problem that nobody likes to talk about".

Other analysts agree. As IDC's research director for storage, Natalya Yezhkova, wrote in a June paper: "Flash-based storage is among a number of technologies that are shaping and transforming datacenters [but] the industry is still in the beginning of the flash adoption journey."

But she is optimistic about the immediate outlook for flash. "As end users start experiencing the benefits of all-flash storage solutions, they should look at the entire ecosystem of product features and data services a vendor can provide," she wrote. "Storage technologies, like flash, should be on a short list for end users to consider."

If you have a big system that needs to shift tons of data at as fast a speed as possible, then flash will be in the mix. As for the rest of us, many people are asking a lot of questions about flash. There is also a mix of vendors out there for enterprise customers to chose from, from the big players EMC, HP, and IBM, to smaller more nimble players like Pure Storage, Solid Fire, and Tegile.

So how well is flash doing? In September IDC's outlook for EMEA showed that in the year to date, flash storage sales had soared by 113 per cent over the previous year, "defying the overall storage market slowdown".

Meanwhile, according to IDC, the external storage systems market in EMEA declined 11 percent year over year to $1.63 billion in the second quarter of 2015. The growth in flash meant that total storage capacity in the region grew two per cent year-on-year to 2.8 exabytes in the second quarter.

Does this mean that the analysts are optimistic about the prospects for recovery in the storage market in EMEA? Far from it, but in a very tough storage market, flash holds the promise of better days ahead.

Cheapest cloud apps to save you money: store it all

Cloud storage is in the news for all the wrong reasons this week: Microsoft cut its OneDrive subscription plans after a handful of users thought “unlimited” meant “unlimited” and stored entire video collections on the service. But cloud storage remains a cheap way of storing your stuff online, and in many cases you can get loads for free. Here are the cheapest cloud apps to save you money.

• Best cloud storage apps compared
• How to use Google Drive in Android

A quick word of warning: while every cloud service does its best to safeguard your stuff, don’t rely on a single service or storage location: if something matters to you, make sure you have a backup.

Cheapest cloud apps to save you money: Google Drive

Every Google Drive user gets 5 GB of storage for free, and if you want more prices start at $1.99 per month for 100 GB, rising to $9.99 per month for 1 TB. If you’re going cloud crazy there’s a 30 TB plan, which will cost you $299.99 per month.

While Google Drive space is also used by Gmail and Google Photos, it isn’t used for everything: documents you create using the likes of Google Doc don’t count towards your storage limit, and neither do the photos you upload to Google Photos provided your pics aren’t more than 16 MP and your videos aren’t higher res than 1080p.

Cheapest cloud apps to save you money: Dropbox

Dropbox’s free service looks comparatively crap with just 2 GB, but you can add to that by referring others to a maximum of 16 GB. The 1TB Dropbox Pro pricing has just been changed, and it’s been reduced to a competitive $9.99 per month. Dropbox’s big strength is its widespread support: in addition to its own desktop and mobile apps it’s connected to hundreds of different apps too.

Cheapest cloud apps to save you money: OneDrive

Microsoft may have cut its limits and dropped its unlimited plan, but OneDrive does still offer a decent amount of storage: the new OneDrive tiers will be 5 GB for free, 50 GB for $1.99 per month and 1 TB for $6.99 per month. However, while OneDrive is a good service the recent and dramatic changes to the plans, which included abolishing the 15 GB bonus users got for enabling automatic camera uploads, means we’d be really wary of trusting this one too much: how do we know Microsoft won’t cut the limits again soon?

Cheapest cloud apps to save you money: Amazon Cloud Drive

The world’s leading cloud storage provider powers some of your favorite websites, and it also offers free storage to us mere mortals. For non-US customers Amazon Cloud Drive offers 5 GB of free storage with plans available from 20 GB (£6 per month) to 1 TB (£320 per month).

In the US, Cloud Drive is slightly different. It has two versions: Unlimited Photos, which also gives you 5 GB of file storage and costs $11.99 per year; and Unlimited Everything, which offers unlimited storage for $59.99 per year. Both versions have 3-month free trials. If you have an Amazon Prime account, Unlimited Photos is free.

Cheapest cloud apps to save you money: Copy

Copy has been around forever, and it’s one of the go-to apps for backing up your stuff to the cloud - but it’s not just a backup utility. It offers folder sharing and photo storage too, and it works with Chromecast to stream media to your TV. You get a whopping 15 GB for free, with 250 GB costing $4.99 per month or 1 TB costing $9.99. Pay for a year and those prices fall to $49 and $99 per year.

Cheapest cloud apps to save you money: Box

The business-focused Box offers two versions: a free version delivering 10 GB, and a $10 per month version that gives you 100 GB. That’s awfully expensive when you consider the same ten bucks gets you a terabyte from rival services such as Google or Dropbox.

Cheapest cloud apps to save you money: Mega

Mega lives up to its name with a massive 50 GB of free storage. 200 GB is €4.99 a month and the most expensive plan, 4 TB per month, is €29.99. Your files are encrypted - Mega is an offshoot of the infamous megaupload.com, which was taken down by the copyright cops - and if the app store reviews are any indication, the app is brilliant most of the time and utterly infuriating at other times.

Microsoft’s New OneDrive Storage Policy Punishes All Users for a Problem it Created

Microsoft this week announced that it is changing the storage plans for everyone across the board and not for the better. In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft published an article on The OneDrive Blog that lays out changes to the storage plans of OneDrive.

Microsoft Kills OneDrive Unlimited Storage and More

I will just dive right into what’s going on for those of you who haven’t learned about the new OneDrive policy. The changes include the following:

• We’re no longer planning to offer unlimited storage to Office 365 Home, Personal, or University subscribers. Starting now, those subscriptions will include 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
• 100 GB and 200 GB paid plans are going away as an option for new users and will be replaced with a 50 GB plan for $1.99 per month in early 2016.
• Free OneDrive storage will decrease from 15 GB to 5 GB for all users, current and new. The 15 GB camera roll storage bonus will also be discontinued. These changes will start rolling out in early 2016.

We’re taking the following steps to make this transition as easy as possible for customers:

• If you are an Office 365 consumer subscriber and have stored in excess of 1 TB, you will be notified of this change and will be able to keep your increased storage for at least 12 months.
• If you are an Office 365 consumer subscriber and find that Office 365 no longer meets your needs, a pro-rated refund will be given. To learn more visit the FAQ.
• If you are using more than 5 GB of free storage, you will continue to have access to all files for at least 12 months after these changes go into effect in early 2016. In addition, you can redeem a free one-year Office 365 Personal subscription (credit card required), which includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage.
• Current customers of standalone OneDrive storage plans (such as a 100 or 200 GB plans) are not affected by these changes.

Punish Everyone for the Actions of a Few?

Microsoft announced unlimited storage for subscribers of certain Office 365 plans. Well, if you do that, what do you think will happen? A lot of users are going to take you up on it right?

Microsoft continues its explanation on the same post:

Since we started to roll out unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 consumer subscribers, a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average.

So Microsoft is saying that a few users have “abused” the offer by uploading enormous digital media collections. If you say “unlimited storage” I don’t see how that is considered abuse.

But, let’s say for the sake of argument that it is abuse. Why do all Microsoft users get punished across the board?

Personally, I have nowhere near 1 TB of data in my OneDrive, and most users will probably never reach that amount. However, there are those who actually benefited from the storage. I read an article about this by Gregg Keiser on ComputerWorld, and he quotes one user as saying “I do video renderings for work. I take max 3TB online. This is extremely bad for me.”

That’s just one example, but I am certain there are a lot more out there who benefit from the generous storage space to actually get work done.

Another interesting point to all of this is that Microsoft allows you to upload your music collection to OneDrive for playback via Groove Music – free of charge. Allowing that, of course, invites people to upload their collections and some of us have enormous collections of CDs ripped to a lossless format like FLAC which is supported now in Windows 10.

The company is backing off on its free OneDrive storage allotment, too. Previously we covered how new users would get 15 GB of Free storage which is something that really set OneDrive apart from the rest.

I also wrote that with this amount of space, it’s advantageous to set all of your mobile devices to auto-backup your photos to OneDrive. These were good incentives for new people to pick OneDrive over a competitor like Google, Apple, or Dropbox.

Microsoft’s response to a few users going nuts uploading mass amounts of content to OneDrive is ridiculous and punishes us all for the actions of a few. This knee-jerk reaction of trying to fix a problem the company created is quite disappointing.

For those of you who use OneDrive storage space for legitimate reasons and are going to be negatively affected by this new policy, make sure to read the OneDrive Changes FAQ on the options you have.

Microsoft's SharePoint 2016: What's hybrid got to do with it?

A first test build of SharePoint Server 2016 will be out this summer, followed by a full beta in the fourth quarter of this year. As Microsoft execs speaking at Ignite explained, that product is based on a snapshot of SharePoint Online that's part of Office 365, which Microsoft is turning into an on-premises release.

The "kernel" of both this online snapshot and SharePoint 2016 itself is SharePoint Server 2013. That means SharePoint 2016 will be focused, like its predecessor, on managing files, content management, sites and portals.

Though it will run on top of Windows Server 2016 R2 and/or Windows Server 2016, SharePoint 2016 will include support for what Microsoft calls "cloud-accelerated experiences," meaning new hybrid scenarios. Microsoft has been talking up the "hybridization" of SharePoint and other new servers for a while, but only after plowing through a bunch of the SharePoint sessions from Ignite (available for viewing by anyone from Microsoft's Channel 9 site), do I have a better feel for what this means.

Instead of trying to push all SharePoint users and all SharePoint workloads to the cloud, Microsoft is acknowledging there are some reasons (compliance among them) that not all data can or should be in SharePoint Online. That said, Microsoft wants to enable its SharePoint users to get at their data wherever it's stored.

Many new Office services, like the Office Graph and Delve Flipboard-for-Business-like application that runs on top of it, rely on the cloud to work. Office Graph, which Microsoft introduced last March, analyzes content, user interactions and activity streams and maps the relationships among these technologies so that it can surface the most relevant content appropriate for each user. Office Graph is an extension of the Enterprise Graph concept in Yammer.

However, as Microsoft execs demonstrated at last week's show, there are ways to bring on-premises servers running SharePoint into the Office Graph picture.

Bill Baer, a Senior Technical Product Manager on SharePoint, demonstrated how users will be able to get a single set of search results that include data stored in SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2016 on-premises. Because Office Graph will "take signals" from SharePoint 2016, customers will be able to see the relationships between entities stored both in the cloud and on-premises.

And it's not just SharePoint 2016 that will enable this. Baer told attendees of one of his Ignite sessions that Microsoft will ship later this year an update that lets users leverage Delve and the Office Graph on SharePoint 2013, too. This doesn't mean Delve and the Office Graph run on SharePoint Server 2013 or SharePoint Server 2016. Instead, a spokesperson clarified, it means "we're enabling customers to leverage the Delve experience with on-premise data in SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2013."

What else is on tap for SharePoint 2016? Microsoft execs promised they'll be making operating, patching and updating SharePoint easier. (Mini server roles will help tame the patching and updating beast, officials said, by reducing overall data center footprint, as will new "zero downtime" online patching technology.)

Performance Point services -- which many of us last heard about back in 2009 when Microsoft dropped Performance Point Server -- are being ported back to SharePoint Server 2016. Project Server will be more tightly integrated, from a database standpoint, with SharePoint Server, though still remain a separate and separately priced product.

Microsoft is planning to provide SharePoint 2016 users with access to other hybridized services, including OneDrive, Team Sites and Extranet and "apps" in the near term, with more hybrid services -- including ones involving data-loss-protection, e-discovery and taxonomy -- coming on-board later, according to the Ignite slide embedded above. (Thanks Johan Erixon.)

Microsoft officials said earlier this year and reiterated at Ignite that SharePoint Server 2016 will not be the last on-premises version of SharePoint. More versions are planned "for the foreseeable future," officials said.

And for those wondering, Microsoft execs say they also won't be dismantling SharePoint Online and replacing it with a bunch of individual, smaller-scoped features in Office 365. The official statement, from a spokesperson: "SharePoint Online will continue to play an important role as the platform underlying a number of Office 365 experiences, including next generation portals like Video, as well as Delve, OneDrive and Team Sites."

WD introduces next-gen storage devices and enhancements

Western Digital (WD) has introduced new enhancements to its family of My Cloud personal storage devices in India. These included a redesigned My Cloud OS 3 operating system Software Developer Kit (SDK) to enable better app integration, and My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 personal cloud storage devices. My Cloud OS 3 comes with WD Sync, which syncs data across PCs and notebooks. The OS also allows users to automatically backup all photos taken from smartphones or tablets. It also includes support for Chromecast and Chromebooks. My Cloud Device SDK and My Cloud API should allow developers to build extensions, features and capabilities within the My Cloud ecosystem. The My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 will cost about Rs. 23,500 for 4TB, Rs. 30,000 for 6TB, Rs. 37,500 for 8TB, and Rs. 55,000 for 12TB.

WD®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) company, and a worldwide leader in storage solutions, today introduced significant enhancements to WD's family of My Cloud® personal storage devices in India. These include a new, redesigned My Cloud OS 3 operating system, Software Developer Kit (SDK) to enable better app integration, and new My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 personal cloud storage device with faster processing capability than previous generations.

WD's My Cloud OS 3 features an intuitive user interface that delivers a rich content-sharing experience and back-up and sync capabilities while retaining the privacy and control of personal cloud devices physically located in the home or office.

"Availability of better infrastructure such as 4G and increased broadband speeds has made it compelling for our consumers to adopt personal cloud. They enjoy the peace of mind from backing up PCs, smart phones, and tablets to and centralizing personal content on their My Cloud systems,” said Khalid Wani, Director, Content Solutions Business, India, Middle East and Africa, WD. "They tell us they are confident in the privacy, control and anywhere access we provide them with the My Cloud OS. Now, with My Cloud OS 3, we've made users' management of their digital lives easier than ever before.”
My Cloud OS 3 features MyCloud.com that provides users global access to their My Cloud via an intuitive web browser-based user interface and enables file collaboration, comprehensive access management and a photos and videos gallery view.

My Cloud OS 3's new WD Sync™ feature syncs data across multiple PCs and notebooks, ensuring that important files are up to date and available to users from almost any device. The new OS also allows users to set up automatic camera-roll backup of photos from smartphones and tablets and offers a new transfer tool that enables users to easily and quickly move their files to My Cloud devices. The OS also includes Chromebook™ notebook computer and Chromecast™ device support.

As part of the My Cloud OS 3 launch, WD has introduced the My Cloud Device SDK and My Cloud API enabling developers to build new extensions, features and capabilities within the My Cloud ecosystem of personal cloud storage devices. The My Cloud Device SDK, based on the Docker™ open platform technology, ensures developers can easily access and collaborate to create customized experiences. WD’s partner, Plex, is already developing extensions and new features based on the new SDK.
In addition to new software upgrades, WD has also introduced a new version of its My Cloud Mirror personal cloud storage device, Gen 2, featuring two hard drives set to Mirror Mode (RAID 1), ensuring content is stored on one drive and automatically duplicated to a second drive. The new My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 personal cloud storage device includes the new features announced for My Cloud OS 3, an improved processor and 512 MB RAM for faster file transfers and application support.
Pricing and Availability

WD My Cloud OS 3 will be available at the end of the month as a free download on current My Cloud personal cloud storage devices. In India, My Cloud devices that will support the new My Cloud OS 3 include: My Cloud, My Cloud Mirror and My Cloud Expert Series EX2/EX4. Customers can also download the new WD My Cloud mobile app, available now on the iTunes and Google Play stores. Access to the My Cloud Device SDK and My Cloud API will be available to interested developers late September.
The My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 personal cloud storage device will have an approximate price of INR 23500 for 4 TB, INR 30000 for 6TB, INR 37500 for 8TB, and INR 55000 for 12 TB variants. The product will be available in India from November onwards through WD’s leading resellers, large-format retail, and online partners.

This news release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the approximate price and estimated availability later this fall of the My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 device in India and the estimated availability later this September of My Cloud OS 3, the My Cloud Device SDK, and My Cloud API. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, including but not limited to, the risks detailed from time-to-time in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including, but not limited to, our most recent annual report on Form 10-K to which your attention is directed. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak as of the date hereof, and WD undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.