WD, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company and a world leader in digital storage solutions, today announced version 10.2 of WD Arkeia network backup software, featuring significant scalability improvements to the WD Arkeia patented Progressive Deduplication technology. WD Arkeia network backup software is a fast, easy-to-use, and affordable solution for small and medium sized businesses that ensures critical business data is backed up on both the local network and in the cloud.

"Backup solutions for businesses are going through a dramatic shift in technology," said Bill Evans, general manager of WD's business storage solutions group. "Advances in data deduplication, hard drive capacity, and wide-area network speeds allow companies to dispense with the error-prone process of trucking nightly backup tapes offsite. WD Arkeia 10.2 extends WD's hybrid cloud backup solution that offers the speed of LAN backups and the security of cloud storage. 'Seed and feed' for overnight transport of large backup sets delivers the flexibility of rapid data recovery when needed."

WD Arkeia's Progressive Deduplication is the critical technology for making replication of backups to the cloud an affordable, tape-free alternative for offsite backup and recovery. WD Arkeia's unique "seed and feed" technology allows the replication of large backup datasets to and from the cloud without the need for fast WAN connectivity. First, administrators export backup datasets in encrypted form via USB 3.0 to portable hard drives or drive arrays. Second, administrators ship the drives to a remote location where the backup sets are imported into another WD Arkeia backup server. Smaller backup sets, such as daily incremental changes to the original large dataset, can be easily performed over the Internet. The reclamation of orphaned deduplication blocks is a key capability for enterprise-grade deduplication solutions.

With WD Arkeia version 10.2, block optimization progresses continuously and orphaned blocks are recovered incrementally. Unlike competitive products, no maintenance window has to be dedicated to the deduplication process and the largest deployments can affect block reclamation invisibly in the background, without administrator intervention.

Availability and Pricing
WD Arkeia version 10.2 is available today for download on www.arkeia.com. The release is free to all WD Arkeia customers on current maintenance contracts. This new capability is available for all WD Arkeia backup servers, whether deployed as software, appliances, or virtual appliances.

Backup software pricing starts at $2,000 for a perpetual license for one backup server with unlimited file and folder backup agents. Backup appliance pricing starts at $3,490 with unlimited file and folder backup agents. Both software and appliances are bundled with one year of software updates and technical support.

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