Hitachi Data Systems Reigns Supreme in Enterprise Storage for the Third Consecutive Year According to Diogenes Labs-Storage Magazine Survey

Business Wire, August 6, 2007

King of the Hill in Enterprise Storage Virtualization Wins Quality Award Three Years in a Row

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT) and the only provider of Services Oriented Storage Solutions, today announced that the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform[TM] won Diogenes Labs-Storage([R]) magazine Quality Award for Enterprise Storage Arrays for the third consecutive year, underscoring Hitachi's legendary reliability and unparalleled commitment to enterprise storage excellence.

Presented by Diogenes Analytical Laboratories, Inc. and TechTarget's Storage magazine, the Quality Awards results are derived from an empirical survey of Storage magazine subscribers identified as managers, administrators, and other end-users of storage systems. The Hitachi Universal Storage Platform garnered top rankings among the five leading enterprise storage systems that were evaluated on the basis of five key areas: sales-force competence, product features, initial product quality, product reliability, and technical support.

"We thank our customers for putting Hitachi on top for the third year in a row -- making this a landmark year for Hitachi Data Systems in enterprise storage," said Brenda Peffer, vice president, Global Marketing, Hitachi Data Systems. "This year we announced that Hitachi shipped more than 6,000 intelligent virtual storage controllers -- extending our lead in enterprise storage virtualization -- and we introduced the new Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V, with the world's first enterprise-class implementation of virtualization with thin provisioning. We remain focused on giving our customers the innovative and extremely reliable storage solutions they have come to expect from Hitachi."

Hitachi Data Systems: Non-Stop Innovation in Enterprise Storage

With of more than 6,000 intelligent virtual storage controllers shipped, Hitachi continues to dominate the enterprise storage virtualization marketplace with the unique capabilities of the Universal Storage Platform. First launched in September 2004, the revolutionary Hitachi Universal Storage Platform pushed the boundaries of enterprise storage by enabling users for the first time to virtualize externally attached heterogeneous storage systems, including those from EMC and IBM; logically partition internal and external storage resources to maximize application quality-of-service; non-disruptively move data across tiers of storage to match business requirements; and deploy sophisticated storage-agnostic remote copy to greatly simplify business continuity.

In May 2007, Hitachi announced a new dimension in storage virtualization, introducing the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V -- featuring the world's first enterprise-class implementation of virtualization with thin provisioning. Hitachi Data Systems continues to provide enterprise customers the ultimate in high-end storage innovation -- taking customers Beyond Virtualization -- combining the virtualization of volumes for non-disruptive data mobility with the virtualization of capacity within those volumes to directly address the power, cooling and space costs of allocated but unused space.

Based on the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V and a multitude of new storage software innovations, in May 2007 Hitachi also introduced Services Oriented Storage Solutions, an intelligent architecture that dramatically alters the current stranglehold that storage architectures have on business flexibility by unleashing a services-oriented approach and specific functionality that enables business units and IT to tailor storage services to business needs and ensure that business units only pay for what is actually used.

About the Diogenes Labs-Storage magazine Quality Awards

The Diogenes Labs-Storage magazine Quality Awards are designed to identify and recognize products that have proven their quality and reliability in actual use. The results are derived from a survey of qualified Storage readers who assessed products in five main categories: sales-force competence, product features, initial product quality, product reliability and technical support. Our methodology incorporates statistically valid polling that eliminates market share as a factor. Our objective is to identify the most reliable product on the market regardless of vendor name, reputation or size. Products are rated on a 1.0-8.0 scale, where 8.0 is the most favorable score.

About Storage

TechTarget's Storage is the only monthly publication that provides information technology (IT) executives, managers, and staff with in-depth analysis and forward-looking guidance on managing, storing, networking, and safeguarding the data at the core of large organizations. TechTarget distributes the magazine to a controlled, qualified circulation of 50,000 storage-focused IT professionals. Storage has received numerous awards, including the ASBPE Awards for Editorial Excellence and the Folio: Show "Ozzie" and "Eddie" Awards. In addition, the editorial staff of Storage has been named a finalist for the prestigious Jesse H. Neal Awards for Excellence in Business Journalism.