When will you release an official announcement about the activity stop?

We know that it is not possible to buy/sell arkeia products anymore.

But what are your plans? Will you integrate a part of it in the products of WD? Will you sell the patents?

After this very very bad surprise you made us, we need urgent answers NOW!

I agree with you kalthen.

When we got in touch with the french Business Manager in charge of Arkeia, he just transfered our request and asked someone at the sales department to answer us but this person told us that she was leaving the company.

For information, it appears that whereas it was not possible to buy Arkeia licences in February 2015, WD strategy as changed a bit, a quotation for a licence in order to add capacity to our diskstorage has been sent to us last week .

But we are still waiting for an official answer about the discontinuation of the product, and the official website should mention it on the frontpage.

We are clients, we have paid for an enterprise solution named Arkeia, we are not simple customers, we are investing in product for long lasting term.

Western Digital should not handle its clients this way if he wants to keep them, so please be honest and communicate.

Thanks for your attention.

WD continues to support existing WD Arkeia customers under maintenance contracts through their expiration. Customers will be able to renew their maintenance and also purchase additional software licensing through December 2018. In the case where customers have purchased extended maintenance agreements, we will support those agreements through 2019.

So are you saying that:

  1. you are no longer selling to new customers,

  2. all support for all Arkeia products will end in 2019 at the latest,

  3. current products will not be developed any further?

If you can clarify this it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Ron

1. you are no longer selling to new customers

That is correct. WD Arkeia is no longer being sold to new customers.

2. all support for all Arkeia products will end in 2019 at the latest

In the case where customers have purchased extended maintenance agreements, we will support those agreements through Dec 31, 2019.

3. current products will not be developed any further?

Existing products are under “Sustaining Support” which means new product features and further development or enhancements are not available.

Hi,

Thanks for clarifying this. I am sad that WD has decided to kill this product, especially so shortly after purchasing it and even more shortly after releasing v11 in Feb. I have some questions/comments about the way this has been done.

RE : 1. This ‘end-of-sales’ position is not generally known nor is it being made known via the WD Arkeia web pages. So as far as the public is concerned it is still business as usual. This is very unprofessional and reflects poorly on ALL of WD. Why would anyone want to do any business with such an unprofessional company? Trust is being destroyed.

RE : 3. This represents another communications mess that destroys trust since here in a forum the message is “sustaining support” and yet the official public website says otherwise:

Version Support Status Sustaining Support
Transition Date
Unsupported
Transition Date
Change Log
11.0 Full Support 31-Jan-2018 31-Jan-2019 Change Log
10.2 Full Support 31-Jan-2016 31-Jan-2018 Change Log
10.1 Full Support 31-Aug-2015 31-Aug-2017 Change Log

That is as of today’s posting, July 15, 2015.

Overall a very sad event handled very poorly at best.

Will you be giving refunds (up to 100%) to those that have purchased maintenance within the 12 months prior to your unofficial, secret killing of the product (one does wonder when that happened and how some folks heard about it, such as the OP for this thread)? It would be fair since one reason maintenance is purchased is to fund and get access to new product releases that have support for updated clients/targets like vmware v6

Cheers,

Ron