$100 million Hitachi, Ltd. investment to position Freedom Data Networks™ as the SAN architecture of choice.
Highlights include the immediate availability of a fully-functional high-end SAN solution already installed at Northern Trust Company.
New Solutions Harvest program addresses key industry issues and brings cohesive business-enabling technologies to market.
April 26 1999 — In response to the increasing demand for fully-functional, non-proprietary Storage Area Networks (SANs), Hitachi Data Systems today announced the opening of its Interoperability Lab (I-Lab), a new research and development facility designed to speed the delivery of Freedom Data Networks (FDN)-based SAN solutions to a broad range of end users.
The Hitachi Data Systems Freedom Data Networks architecture is a flexible structure for implementing SANs and other networked data solutions that allow customers to access and control their data without being tied to proprietary technology that limits their business options.
"Our primary goal at Hitachi Data Systems is to remove barriers to SAN implementation," said Brian Neth, Vice President, Hitachi Data Systems Enterprise Laboratory. "Interoperability concerns are prohibiting many companies from enjoying the benefits that SAN technology can provide today. By enabling our customers to use storage products from any vendors they choose, Hitachi Data Systems is providing the most efficient SAN architecture in the marketplace.
"The I-Lab brings forth an environment where, together with our partners and business units, we can work together to ensure seamless SAN integration for our customers. All of Hitachi Data Systems' packaged SAN solutions are bolstered by years of networking expertise with industry leaders and are backed with Hitachi, Ltd.'s research and development resources," added Neth.
The new I-lab continues the tradition of the successful Hitachi Data Systems Enterprise Laboratory, which has been in continuous operation since 1989 producing enterprise-based solutions and consecutive performance enhancements. The I-Lab will enable Hitachi Data Systems to build upon an already solid foundation and quickly tailor effective SAN designs to meet wide-ranging customer requirements in a variety of business environments.
One of the first successes of the I-Lab was its replication of a SAN implemented at Northern Trust Company of Chicago. In conjunction with the Hitachi Data Systems Solutions Factory, the I-Lab transformed the replication into a packaged SAN suite called the Hitachi Data Systems Freedom SAN™ Solution. Available immediately in North America, this SAN solution is designed for a Windows NT environment, and will enable customers to pool storage devices in a central location, utilize a common Automated Tape Library (ATL) to back up multiple server locations, and off-load data management traffic from the LAN.
"By duplicating what the Hitachi Data Systems Technical Services Group installed in Chicago, we are enabling Northern Trust to help expand on their SAN environment," said Brian Neth. "The lessons that we learn and the improvements that we make to the Northern Trust-based Freedom SAN Solution will immediately be implemented back in Chicago, sent to the field, and rolled out to our customer base as well. The I-Lab intends to service a broad range of SAN environments, from middle-market customers to our high-end Fortune 300 clients."
Over a period of time, Hitachi, Ltd. will invest $100 million in the I-Lab to ensure that it will be better able to configure and deploy highly-scalable integrated solution suites flexible enough to meet the many and varied critical business problems faced by customers.
"Hitachi Data Systems is committed to providing our customers with the broadest range of information management solutions in the marketplace," said Jeff Edwards, Group Vice President, Hitachi Data Systems Enterprise Solutions. "Our parent company's investment in our new I-Lab represents a unified dedication to encourage the learning, planning, development, and deployment of Freedom Data Networks-based SAN implementations. We will work closely with partners, alliances, and customers to deliver a series of SAN solutions designed to serve a broad spectrum of today's business needs."
"Hitachi Data Systems' SAN strategy is to examine new technologies, understand them, and integrate them into a total solution that will address a particular critical business issue," said Christine Wallis, Vice President of Marketing, Hitachi Data Systems Enterprise Storage. "Secondly, we aim to disseminate that knowledge out to the rest of the IT industry and influence change in as many computing environments as possible."
With an emphasis on ergonomics and user-friendliness, the I-Lab will bring a fresh, new look to the mainstream open systems lab, ensuring a mutually appealing environment for employees, partners, and customers. Upon completion, the I-lab will be divided into individual sections, each highlighting different product solutions. One section will feature an engineering showcase, designed to provide customers a tangible view of the I-Lab's latest SAN implementations and prototypes.
An extension of the Enterprise Solutions group is the Hitachi Data Systems Solutions Factory, a core group of industry specialists with IT expertise in storage, services, telecommunications, and server applications. The Solutions Factory has been working closely with the I-Lab to produce cohesive, replicable solutions intended to address key business issues such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), knowledge management, business continuity, data mining, SANs, server consolidation, and e-commerce development.
After completing a thorough analysis of the Northern Trust SAN implementation, the Solutions Factory identified its robust design characteristics and saw its potential for general availability. Through its newly introduced Solutions Harvest program, the Solutions Factory was able to unleash the collective knowledge of Hitachi Data Systems and its partners to create the new Freedom SAN Solution.
"By harvesting SAN knowledge within our company, our partners, and our clients, we were able to bring to market a fully-functional, high-end SAN solution ideal for end-users based in Fortune 300 data centers," said Jeff Edwards.
"We have innovations scattered around the globe and this is a way for us to identify and to look for common aspects through a Solutions Harvest. Whether we've developed it internally or whether its been developed out in the field, wherever we've found this knowledge, we can then determine whether it is a repeatable solution that we can package, and bring to the IT marketplace. That's where the Solutions Harvest program comes in. Solutions Harvest is designed to leverage the capabilities of all the alliances, hardware, software, and services business units, to develop repeatable business solutions."
The Hitachi Data Systems I-Lab represents a forum for integration activities that encourages both partners and customers to work together with Hitachi Data Systems personnel in developing new business solutions. "The quickest way to integrate products is to get everybody onsite, in the same room, ready to take a hands-on approach to problem solving," said Brian Neth.
"Our vision is to create a place for everyone to gather, to learn from one another. On an ongoing basis we have provided a forum for the collective members of the IT industry to engage in intense architecture design, SAN testing, system integration, and business solution planning. We want to encourage the use of new technologies, and are part of an international effort to drive adoption of Fibre Channel and other SAN solutions benefiting the entire industry."
Currently undergoing preliminary testing in the I-Lab are several computing architectures designed to enable customers to take advantage of the e-commerce explosion. By examining the critical business needs of corporations who wish to engage in serious e-commerce, the I-Lab is able to construct specific architectures that are able to sustain billions of Internet hits a day, provide continuous availability, virtually unlimited scalability, and increased system throughput in every segment of the enterprise. Once key e-business architecture solutions are developed and tested in a myriad of extreme Internet-based environments, the I-Lab will work with other key Hitachi Data Systems business groups to replicate the architectures and offer them as packaged suites ready to meet the wide-ranging challenges of e-business-oriented clients.
Recognized as a leading provider of business solutions for the world's most IT-intensive corporations, Hitachi Data Systems offers a global professional services division, multiplatform storage subsystems, and the industry's broadest line of high-performance servers. The company's extensive range of products and services, coupled with its business alliances with key industry leaders, enable it to translate technology into enterprise-wide solutions for high-end and middle-market customers. Hitachi Data Systems is owned by Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT) and has its headquarters in Santa Clara, California.
Contacts: PR
Mark Lewis at Hitachi Data Systems (408) 970-4356.
Hitachi Data Systems is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. Freedom SAN and Freedom Data Networks are trademarks of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. Windows NT is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other brand or product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used to identify, products or services of their respective owners.
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