
At Western Digital's Innovation Day 2026 event, the company announced a new intelligent storage platform layer with open APIs that is designed to help customers operating 200+ PB fleets to both manage those devices and seamlessly add new ones.
The software layer is set to launch in 2027 and is intended to simplify integration of different classes of storage devices (including UltraSMR hard drives by non-hyperscalers), reduce qualification risk, and accelerate deployment of new devices. As an added bonus (to WD, at least), that platform layer will lock in customers with its hardware.