Hitachi Delivers Affordable Enterprise Virtualization for Any Data Center without Compromise

Business Wire, Sept 10, 2007

New Rackmounted Universal Storage Platform VM Offers Migration and Provisioning Pain Relief in a Small Physical Size with a Large Virtual Footprint

Introducing the World's First Enterprise-Class Implementation of Heterogeneous Virtualization with Thin Provisioning in a Compact 10U Form Factor, Further Reducing Data Center Space, Power & Cooling Costs for Customers

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- In the face of unprecedented infrastructure complexity, the relentless proliferation of disparate storage arrays and corporate edicts to reduce carbon output worldwide, Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), today rounded out the industry's most comprehensive line of storage systems, the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform[TM] V series, to address these pressing issues. The all-new Hitachi Universal Storage Platform VM is the world's first heterogeneous storage services platform that offers customers the operational, financial and environmental benefits of enterprise-class virtualization, thin provisioning and tiered storage in a package that does not require a raised floor data center and operates on an industry standard 220-volt power supply.

The popularity and growth of storage networks combined with merger and acquisition activity has left many organizations with a sea of incompatible storage arrays distributed across multiple locations. Many customers also struggle with a complex assortment of software license schemes from different vendors, expensive capacity-based tier one licensing policies, and a server infrastructure that is both underutilized and unable to get to required data easily. The Universal Storage Platform VM joins the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V as the industry's most complete enterprise-class platforms developed explicitly to address these vital concerns.

"SAN silos have crept into the data center making storage management and provisioning onerous for many organizations," said Dave Vellante, CEO of leading CIO consultancy ITCentrix. "Storage migrations in particular are expensive and disruptive. Our independent analysis confirms that for every dollar spent on array hardware and software, an additional 50 cents is spent on incremental migration costs over the life of an array. Approaches like Hitachi's USP VM can dramatically reduce this cost from 50 percent down to less than 10 percent through the combination of heterogeneous tiered storage support, virtualization and thin provisioning."

"We are witnessing a new Hitachi that is aggressively driving its storage virtualization leadership position through consistent innovation," said Tony Asaro, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "The USP VM provides all of the advanced capabilities of its big brother, the USP V, but at a lower cost and smaller footprint. This new system allows smaller enterprises to package and deliver advanced virtualization, thin provisioning and business continuity storage services across heterogeneous file, object or block-based storage devices."

No Compromise Virtualized Tiered Storage

Building on the innovations introduced with the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V, the new Hitachi Universal Storage Platform VM is the only virtualization platform that offers enterprises of any size the opportunity to take back control of heterogeneous storage assets without introducing the reliability and scalability drawbacks of virtualization appliances.

Customer strategies to grapple with the challenges of reigning in sprawling storage infrastructure include:

* Simplifying storage tiers to accommodate high performance tier one applications and defaulting everything else to tier two to reduce costs;

* Virtualizing both server-side and storage-side assets, providing any-to-any connectivity between servers and data, often requiring the placement of tier one storage arrays behind less reliable and lower performing virtualization appliances;

* Introducing a single management framework to support simplified management and non-disruptive migration and data movement within and between tiers one and two and to tier three archive platforms as required by retention policies.

* Providing a common storage services platform for virtual tape, high performance NAS, or active archival, eliminating the need for separate islands of storage caused by niche solutions.

"Customers are finding these strategies require tradeoffs with competitive solutions on the market today," said John Mansfield, senior vice president, Global Solutions Strategy and Development, Hitachi Data Systems. "Virtualization appliances, while supporting heterogeneous storage assets, struggle to provide the scalability and reliability needed to support tier one applications. Some storage arrays sometimes provide thin provisioning and in-box tiering; however they don't support the cross-tier management of heterogeneous assets. The Hitachi Universal Storage Platform VM provides the performance, reliability and architecture, with thin provisioning, to virtualize all data center storage assets cost effectively."