Western Digital picks up Storage Vendor of the Year

The industry gave Western Digital a huge boost at the Distree Channel Awards, by voting them the ‘Storage Vendor of the Year'. Given that WD struggled to ship drives at all in the busiest period, this was a grand gesture. KitGuru snapped up some of the atmosphere.

When record rains claimed lives in Thailand, most of Western Digital's key production lines sank under water. The consequences of this natural disaster were immediate and far reaching. Locally, the end user price of a 1TB drive went up nearly 3-fold, from £40 to almost £115.

So when the whole of the IT industry, across EMEA, voted Western Digital as ‘Storage Vendor of the Year', it brought a warm smile to the faces of Sven Rathgen (Senior Director Sales Central & Eastern Europe) and his team. Standing on stage, bathed in applause, you could see the happy chappy's face break into a childlike grin – echoing Sally Fields' Oscar acceptance posture of “They love us, they really do love us”.

It was a great moment that capped a great channel event.

KitGuru says: Good to see that such a hardcore and competitive industry and come together and show support for such a large corporation – laid low by circumstance.

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