SANTA CLARA, Calif., September 27, 2010 -- Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), today introduced the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, the industry’s first 3 dimensional scaling platform, enabling organizations to scale up, out and deep for unprecedented levels of agility and cost savings in their virtualized data centers. The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP), in combination with the new Hitachi Command Suite management software, offers best-in-class performance, capacity and open, multivendor storage virtualization for large businesses and enterprise organizations. Together, these solutions represent a major milestone in continued Hitachi Data Systems commitment to transform data centers into dynamic information centers where access to blocks, files and content is seamless and resides in a fluid and virtualized environment. (See related press release also issued today: “Hitachi Data Systems Announces Major Milestone on the Road to Enabling Data Center Transformation.”)

“Storage vendors that deliver on the critical requirements, such as 3D scaling, are what enterprises are looking for to transform their data center into an infrastructure that meets the demanding requirements of today’s virtualized environment.”
“Hitachi has a long history of innovation and industry-leading technologies since first introducing heterogeneous storage virtualization within the storage system,” said Hu Yoshida, chief technology officer and vice president, Hitachi Data Systems. “Today, only the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Hitachi Command Suite provide the scalability and integration that will transform the data center with new levels of agility, flexibility, performance and sustainability. With unique 3D scaling and management, customers can deliver capacity and computing resources as quickly as virtual servers are created. This platform was actually built for virtualized server environments.”

Hitachi VSP: 3D Scaling for Performance, Capacity, External Storage Asset Utilization

The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is the only storage architecture that scales 3 dimensionally to help customers adapt flexibly for performance, capacity and multivendor storage asset utilization. Its data migration capabilities greatly reduce outage windows. Page-level dynamic tiering automates the page-based movement of data to the most appropriate storage media to simplify and optimize tier costs and performance. With new 2.5-inch SAS hard disk drives, it is the highest density storage available today. And, with more than 30 percent less power consumption for capacity stored than the competition, it is the most efficient enterprise storage platform. 3D scaling delivers extreme performance and capacity for robust disaster recovery and high availability systems:

Scale up to meet increasing demands of applications and servers:

Scale dynamically for performance, capacity, and connectivity without disruption

Add incremental resources as demand for storage resources increases by tightly coupling them through a global cache

Scale resources nondisruptively, including caches, ports, and drives to meet demands

Scale out to support multiple servers with changing workload requirements:

Build out the storage system by combining multiple units into a single logical system

Provision storage dynamically to multiple host servers on demand from a common pool of storage resources

Tailor for workloads and server needs without compromise

Achieve the highest performance for open and mainframe environments

Scale deep to extend the platform’s capabilities and value to heterogeneous storage:

Integrate multivendor external storage into the storage pool with scale up and scale out functionality

Provide a single platform for block, file and content with central management, data protection and search

Use lower cost external storage for lower cost purposes

Reduce OPEX through a common management framework

“Today’s data centers are reaching an inflection point, evolving into something that is more agile, scalable and efficient,” said Roger W. Cox, research vice president, Gartner, Inc. “Storage vendors that deliver on the critical requirements, such as 3D scaling, are what enterprises are looking for to transform their data center into an infrastructure that meets the demanding requirements of today’s virtualized environment.”

Use Cases: Enabling Server Virtual Environments and Cloud Deployments

Companies that will benefit from the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform are those with massive scalability requirements, such as virtualized server environments or those looking to facilitate and optimize their cloud deployments:

Deep integration with leading server virtualization platforms like VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V for end-to-end visibility from individual virtual machine to storage logical unit and protection of large-scale multivendor environments:

Integration with the Hitachi NAS Platform for best-in-class performance and scalability, single namespace, unprecedented intelligent file and objects tiering, and the fastest performing NFS protocol for VMs

Ideal foundation for organizations moving toward the Hitachi Unified Compute Platform, which consists of servers, storage and network assets managed as inclusive business resources to put the right data in the right place at the right time.

Hitachi Command Suite: Maximizing IT Asset Utilization in Complex Infrastructures

The Hitachi Command Suite, tightly integrated with reliable hardware, enables “worry free scaling” of large numbers of virtual machines and manages even the largest infrastructures and application deployments. It provides effective reporting and management to maximize IT asset utilization within complex infrastructures, unified management for virtual tiered storage and server environments, and improved business application availability, performance and access to critical data. Organizations powered by the Hitachi Command Suite simply and effectively develop and manage their next generation virtualized data centers to reduce risks and operational costs, operate efficiently, and a realize return on their storage asset investments.

Through unique management in three dimensions, the Hitachi Command Suite helps customers lower costs and properly manages all data types:

Manage up:

Increase management automation and efficiency for storage, computing and virtual infrastructures

Manage more than 5 million objects and 255PB of virtualized capacity under one management server

Manage out:

Build a single, consolidated multivendor storage management framework with the breadth to manage storage, servers and the IT infrastructure

Unify management for block, file and content across all Hitachi storage

Create end-to-end visibility and correlation of applications, virtual machines and servers, and logical storage devices for traditional and virtualized VMware and Microsoft Hyper V environments

Manage deep:

Manage data center complexities with an integrated suite for the highest operational efficiency

Incorporate both capacity and performance for service level management

Gain application visibility into the virtualized or cloud infrastructure through a dashboard that shows the status of the application’s service level agreement (SLA), actual storage resources being utilized, health of storage assets, and utilization trend lines.

Key Metrics

Built on a heritage of market-leading innovation, the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Hitachi Command Suite provide organizations with a reliable, dynamic and open architecture that helps lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) in the first year and will future proof their data centers. It includes a proven services organization and network of partners to help reduce operational and capital costs, lower implementation risks, transition to a new environment, and extend the life of current assets. (See related press release also issued today: “Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Embraced by Global Partner Ecosystem.”) Savings include:

Reduced TCO: by up to 33 percent in first year, compared to monolithic architectures

Reduced storage acquisition costs: by up to 70 percent through tiered storage, storage reclamation and dynamic tiering

Reduced storage footprint: by more than 30 percent compared to the competition

Reduced carbon emissions: by more than 30 percent compared to the competition

Supporting Quotes

HDFC Bank: “Over the years, we have found the right partner in Hitachi Data Systems who have helped us consistently transform our IT landscape by leveraging their cutting edge technology. Their proactive approach in updating and helping us deploy new technologies has enabled us to stay ahead of our competition. We are confident that the new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Hitachi Command Suite will further improve our overall business productivity, while delivering significant environmental impact.” ~Harish Shetty, executive vice president, Information Technology

Lloyds Banking Group: “We’ve evaluated the new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Command Suite software to power one of our most important infrastructure programs. Initial results showed that the new platform and software delivered consistent performance improvements, as well as uninterrupted service, which are key enablers for Lloyds Banking Group WMTT infrastructure strategy.” ~Colin Everett, head of IT Infrastructure, Wholesale
Markets Treasury and Trading

University of Utah Health Care: “At University of Utah Health Care, our storage requirements are characterized by growth and retention. The Universal Storage Platform integrated virtualization with the storage area network and not as a separate module. Now, the new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform will help us to meet our needs for higher capacity and performance while protecting our patient records. We see no other storage solution that can match the 3D scaling ability in a single storage product.” ~Jim Livingston, director, IT

Availability

The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Hitachi Command Suite are available worldwide.

Hitachi Data Systems provides best-in-class information technologies, services and solutions that deliver compelling customer ROI, unmatched return on assets (ROA) and demonstrable business impact. With a vision that IT must be virtualized, automated, cloud-ready and sustainable, Hitachi Data Systems offers solutions that improve IT costs and agility. With more than 4,200 employees worldwide, Hitachi Data Systems does business in more than 100 countries and regions. Hitachi Data Systems products, services and solutions are trusted by the world’s leading enterprises, including more than 70 percent of the Fortune 100 and more than 80 percent of the Fortune Global 100. Hitachi Data Systems believes that data drives our world – and information is the new currency. To learn more, visit: http://www.hds.com.

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT / TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 360,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2009 (ended March 31, 2010) consolidated revenues totaled 8,968 billion yen ($96.4 billion). Hitachi will focus more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes information and telecommunication systems, power systems, environmental, industrial and transportation systems, and social and urban systems, as well as the sophisticated materials and key devices that support them. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.

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Source: Hitachi Ltd.