It may be time to revise your opinion of Hitachi Data Systems. Though the company is well established in the high end of the enterprise storage market, it's been clear for some time that it needs to diversify its portfolio to remain competitive, gain more influence and cater to the ever-expanding storage requirements of midsized to large organizations.
This is a process that, under the tutelage of CEO Jack Domme, HDS is now embracing with more vigor than ever before. And, in something of a departure from the company's traditionally cautious approach, M&A has been playing a key role recently. In September, HDS acquired enterprise NAS partner BlueArc, and followed that up in October with the purchase of services specialist Shoden Data Systems. With these and other pieces in place, HDS is starting to use this transformation to reposition itself as a strategic enabler of what it calls the customer journey to the 'information center.'
The recent battle between Hewlett-Packard and Dell for enterprise storage specialist 3PAR was an unprecedented event in the storage industry, and the eventual price tag of $2.4bn reflects the lengths that two players were prepared to go to in order to own intellectual property in this space. It should put to bed any doubts that, following a brief hiatus, the enterprise market is once again the place to be in storage. Against this background of activity, Hitachi Data Systems' refresh of its own flagship enterprise storage array – the Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) – seems prescient. As we've noted previously, the price for 3PAR was pushed so high because Dell and HP decided that it was the most viable technology target to meet the evolving requirements of large enterprise customers.
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