Western Digital Advances Ecosystem Collaboration, Innovation for AI Acceleration, Disaggregated Storage and SDS at Computex 2025

Computex 2025 – Western Digital (Nasdaq: WDC) is redefining what’s possible in storage infrastructure for AI/ML, disaggregated storage and software-defined storage (SDS) for CSPs, enterprises and STaaS providers. From massive-capacity, reliable JBODs (Just a Bunch of Disks) to ultra-fast EBOF (Ethernet Bunch of Flash) NVMe-oF disaggregated storage solutions for AI, the company’s Platforms Business delivers world-class HDD- and SSD-based solutions that power today’s most demanding workloads.

As AI, ML and data-heavy workloads continue to accelerate, organizations face growing pressure to build flexible storage infrastructures that are scalable, efficient and sustainable. Traditional systems may struggle to keep pace with modern demands. Giving customers the flexibility to scale and the freedom to avoid vendor lock-in, Western Digital is announcing the expansion of the company’s Open Composable Compatibility Lab (OCCL); a new Ultrastar Data102 ORv3 JBOD and an OpenFlex Data24 4100 with single-port SSDs; as well as new SSD qualifications for its OpenFlex Data24 NVMe-oF storage platform.

Open Lab. Smarter Infrastructure. OCCL 2.0 is Here.

Western Digital’s Open Composable Compatibility Lab (OCCL) in Colorado Springs accelerates industry-wide interoperability for fabric-attached devices and software-defined storage. Designed for CSPs and enterprise customers, the OCCL serves as a vendor-neutral proving ground to simulate real-world environments and workloads—providing critical insights into system compatibility, interoperability, energy efficiency, and performance optimization. For modern NVMe-oF architectures, OCCL provides testing across disaggregated compute, storage and networking to help customers scale more efficiently, reduce costs, and deploy with greater confidence. Key enhancements include:

• Solutions Architectures: OCCL 2.0 will generate detailed solutions architectures, offering guidance on deploying and managing composable disaggregated infrastructure effectively.
• Disaggregated Storage Best Practices: OCCL 2.0 will highlight best practices for disaggregated storage, helping organizations to maximize efficiency and scalability.
• Industry Expertise: OCCL 2.0 will continue to be a source of thought leadership, sharing strategic insights and innovations in the field of composable infrastructure.
• SSD Partner Benchmarking: OCCL 2.0 will include comprehensive results from benchmarking tools to evaluate the performance of SSD partners, ensuring optimal storage solutions.

These advancements will further solidify OCCL's role as a leading lab in the industry for creating partnerships with customers and suppliers, benchmarking for establishing architectural control points, and driving forward the adoption and implementation of new open ecosystems to replace proprietary architectures.