Industry's first fully-functional high-end SAN installed at Northern Trust Company; New suite of SAN Professional Services launched; Wide range of alliances formed to deliver comprehensive SAN solutions; Interoperability Laboratory established to ensure that solutions meet customer expectations.
April 26 1999 — To help customers rein in the costs of managing the rapidly increasing volumes of business information, Hitachi Data Systems today announced Freedom Data Networks (FDN). FDN provides an open architecture that leverages Storage Area Network (SAN) technology and offers organizations freedom of choice in deploying data-access and data-sharing capabilities across the enterprise. With FDN, customers gain a powerful new tool that enables the consolidation of servers and storage, increased data availability, centralized storage management, and the ability to back up and migrate data without affecting the performance of enterprise networks.
"FDN is a data-centric, rather than storage-centric, approach to data access, data sharing, and control. Instead of relying only on advances in storage-system technology to achieve universal access to data, FDN-based solutions are open to advances in all the technologies that 'touch' data on its way to becoming useful business information," said David Coombs, vice president and general manager, Hitachi Data Systems Enterprise Storage.
"As such, we recognized early on that FDN requires a high level of systems integration expertise to deliver effective solutions to end users. Therefore, we are forming a wide range of alliances with providers of system components and indirect channels resellers; we have established a special laboratory to prove the interoperability of SAN components; and we have developed our own suite of consulting services to support the implementation of SANs."
FDN-based solutions will exploit advances in servers, storage systems, interconnection devices, network protocols, and network configurations. Today, these technologies fall under the broad category of Storage Area Networks. However, the FDN architecture goes beyond SANs, providing the overall structure for solutions that allow customers to manage their data without being tied to proprietary technology that limits their business options.
This gives customers the freedom to locate their storage either inside or outside the data center, wherever it makes the greatest business sense to do so. Moreover, it allows customers to manage a wide variety of server, interconnection, and storage platforms under the FDN methodologies — giving them flexibility in establishing open system configurations and protecting investment in currently installed system components.
Within the FDN architecture, SANs provide high-speed fibre channel networks for connecting multiple, multi-vendor servers to a pool of multi-vendor storage devices distributed throughout the enterprise. SANs offered by Hitachi Data Systems will support the open-systems standards being developed by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).
"For Storage Area Networks to become a reality within business environments, customers need an open solution that will ultimately allow connections between any server, storage system, and operating system," said Mike Kahn, Chairman of The Clipper Group, technology acquisition specialists located in Wellesley, Massachusetts. "With the introduction of the Freedom Data Networks Architecture, Hitachi Data Systems permits customers to configure storage with significant interoperability across OS/390®, UNIX®, and Windows NT® environments."
The first customer to install a Hitachi Data Systems-developed SAN — and one of the first anywhere in the world to implement a fully-functional high-end SAN — is Northern Trust Company of Chicago. Northern Trust's SAN will enable the company 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. (Please see the separate Hitachi Data Systems news release also dated April 26, 1999, which discusses the Northern Trust solution)
The SAN implementation at Northern Trust forms the basis of the Hitachi Data Systems Freedom SAN™ Solution, which Hitachi Data Systems will market directly to end users in Fortune 300 data centers. The solution consists of the following components: Hitachi Data Systems VisionBase Servers, Hitachi Data Systems Freedom Storage 7700E subsystem, Ancor Fibre Channel switches, and Emulex Fibre Channel adapter cards. Options include HARBOR™ File Transfer and File Level Backup and Restore software.
While Hitachi Data Systems Freedom Storage — a data-center-to-desktop family of SAN-ready storage subsystems — will play a central role in the SAN solutions delivered by Hitachi Data Systems, customers will not be limited to the use of these subsystems. To assure that a wide variety of components will operate effectively in Hitachi Data Systems' SAN solutions, and to help speed the delivery of Freedom Data Networks-based solutions to end users, Hitachi Data Systems has established a new $100-million dollar Interoperability Laboratory (I-Lab) at its Santa Clara headquarters.
Among the I-Lab's earliest projects was the replication and operation of the SAN developed for Northern Trust. The experience gained here will enable Hitachi Data Systems to quickly tailor effective SAN designs to meet wide-ranging customer requirements in a variety of business environments.
Key to the delivery of Hitachi Data Systems' FDN solutions through its direct sales force is a growing number of industry alliances in areas such as networking, communications, and software. Each of these alliances supports Hitachi Data Systems' intent to provide fully open solutions based on the use of a wide variety of interoperable components. The initial suite of alliance partners for solutions developed by Hitachi Data Systems' includes the following:
Ancor Communications, Inc. for high-performance Fibre Channel switches
Emulex Corporation for Fibre Channel host bus adapters for Windows NT® platforms
Gadzoox® Networks, Inc. for Fibre Channel hubs
Indirect Channels Broaden the Market for FDN
"Hitachi Data Systems is executing a two-pronged strategy for delivering wide-open SAN solutions," said David Coombs. "On the one hand, we're offering comprehensive, fully operable solutions delivered by our direct sales force that can be easily adapted to a variety of special needs in customer environments. With these solutions, we'll target our Fortune 300 data center-based customers. And on the other hand, we're forging partnerships with value-added resellers whose expertise and experience will allow them to work within our Freedom Data Networks architecture to deliver custom-built SAN solutions to customers in the rest of the business-computing universe. In both cases, our intention is to give customers freedom to install solutions that maximize their business agility."
In support of its aggressive push into indirect-channel marketing, Hitachi Data Systems is partnering with leading providers of information management solutions such as Datalink® Corporation to deliver SAN solutions to customers who are not conventionally served by Hitachi Data Systems' direct sales force.
"Hitachi Data Systems' Freedom Data Networks architecture, with its vision of providing fully open SAN solutions, is an ideal match for the skills Datalink brings to the table," said Greg Meland, President and CEO of Datalink. "With so much at stake, our customers rely on us for best-in-class technologies and services. We look forward to deploying Hitachi Data Systems' world-renowned technology as part of our SAN solutions."
Also included in today's SAN announcements is a new suite of professional services from Hitachi Data Systems that will assist clients in planning and implementing Storage Area Network solutions to optimize management and control of data across the enterprise. The modular services include the Enterprise Infrastructure Architecture (EIA) Service, the SAN Configuration Management Service, the SAN System Design Service, the SAN Project Management Service, the SAN Installation Service, and the SAN Business Continuance Service.
With any or all of these services, clients will be able to take advantage of the support and expertise provided by Hitachi Data Systems at each stage of SAN design, development, or implementation.
A SAN is a network of storage systems and servers that enables data to be centrally pooled within an enterprise. SANs enable higher scalability; increased addressing; centralized management of storage systems and storage backup; 100MB-per-second fibre channel connectivity, which covers distances of up to 10 kilometers; and high availability. The main benefit of SAN implementation is a lower cost of ownership through more efficient use of resources. For example, backup windows can be significantly shortened; tape backup systems can be consolidated into larger silos; storage resources can be consolidated; and management of storage pools can be made more efficient. SANs also address the increasing workload on the LAN by off-loading data-intensive applications, such as data backup.
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
Bob Neudecker at Hitachi Data Systems (408) 970-4450.
Hitachi Data Systems is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. Freedom SAN, Freedom Data Networks, Freedom Storage, and VisionBase are trademarks of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. OS/390 is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited. HARBOR is a trademark of BETA Systems Corporation. Windows NT is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Gadzoox is a registered trademark of Gadzoox Networks, Inc. Ancor is a mark and property of Ancor Communications, Inc. Datalink is a registered trademark of Datalink Corporation. 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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