Western Digital said it is preparing a small business NAS based on Windows Storage Server
The company said it has signed an OEM software agreement with Microsoft to use the Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials operating system software. No further details were provided.
WD has been a force in the consumer NAS market with its MyBook NASes. But it has lagged in the small business space, offering only its dated and troubled WD ShareSpace.
The jump directly to a Windows Server based small-biz NAS is an interesting one. Most small business NASes use Linux-based OSes. And even Iomega, which had dabbled in Windows-based NASes, has moved to its own Linux-based firmware.