Crossroads and McDATA Expand Connectivity Options for Comprehensive SAN Solutions
7th February 2000 — Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), today announced expansion of the company's OpenSAN initiative to include Crossroads Systems, Inc. and McDATA Corporation. Hitachi Data Systems will resell storage area network (SAN) components from these companies.
Since April of last year, Hitachi Data Systems has aggressively built the OpenSAN initiative - whose founding partners include Ancor Communications, Inc., Emulex Corp., Gadzoox Networks, Inc., and JNI Corp. - to provide comprehensive, open Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions with industry-leading and tightly integrated SAN technology. Hitachi Data Systems' vision is to become a single source for SAN solutions; it expects to continue adding vendors to the OpenSAN Alliance Program to provide the widest range of SAN components and options.
"By adding Crossroads and McDATA to our lineup of existing SAN alliances, Hitachi Data Systems expands the range of choices available to our customers and further emphasizes its vision of offering SAN solutions that are completely open," said Richard Search, vice president of storage product management and marketing. "Our OpenSAN strategy provides customers a choice in selecting the combination of SAN components that best meets their specific business objectives. It assures they will have full interoperability testing and support, while also offering cost-effective and efficient so-lutions for the management and administration of storage throughout their enterprises."
Hitachi Data Systems and its alliance partners provide four key SAN components: storage systems, such as Hitachi Data Systems Freedom Storage™; interconnect devices, such as routers, directors, hubs, and switches; host bus adapters; and central management software. The Hitachi Freedom Stor-age 7700E and 5800 family of SAN-enabled products provides high-performance and high-availability data storage across heterogeneous computing environments.
As a result of the agreements announced today, Hitachi Data Systems will resell:
Crossroads Systems 4200 Fibre Channel-to-SCSI Router, which provides bi-directional connec-tivity for data transfer between a Fibre Channel Storage Area network (SAN) and legacy SCSI devices, and supports World Wide Names for HP/UX and AIX
McDATA's ED-5000 Enterprise Fibre Channel Director, a 32-port director that provides high availability and dynamic switching to meet customers' reliability and performance requirements.
Hitachi Data Systems' interoperability laboratory, the I-Lab, provides steadfast assurance that the company's SAN products are interoperable with the SAN components in its portfolio..
Also helpful in establishing Hitachi Data Systems as a leader in SAN technology is a suite of Techni-cal Services offerings that assist clients in planning, implementing, and managing SAN-based envi-ronments to optimize the control of data across the enterprise. These services include:
SAN Enterprise Infrastructure Assessment (EIA) Service,
SAN Configuration Management Service
SAN System Design Service
SAN Project Management Service
SAN Installation Service
SAN Business Continuous Service.
Recognized as a leading provider of business solutions for the world's most IT-intensive corpora-tions, Hitachi Data Systems offers technical services, multi-platform storage subsystems, and the in-dustry's broadest line of high-performance servers. The company's solutions are "built for fast times™", enabling customers to exploit the value of information technology for success in the Inter-net economy. These solutions reflect Hitachi's vision of allowing clients to focus on their business, and not their technology. Hitachi Data Systems is owned by Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT) and has its headquarters in Santa Clara, California. For further information on Hitachi Data Systems, access http://www.hds.com/.
Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 1998 (ended March 31, 1999) consolidated sales of 7,977 billion yen ($65.9 billion). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://www.hitachi.co.jp.
¹ At an exchange rate of 121 yen to the dollar.
Note: For further information on Hitachi Data Systems' SAN partners, access www.hds.com/partners/. For further information on Hitachi Data Systems' SAN vision, access www.hds.com/products_services/san/ Hitachi Data Systems press releases are available at www.hds.com/press_room/press_releases/.
Contacts: PR
Hitachi Data Systems is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. Free-dom Storage is a trademark of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. Windows NT is a registered trademark of Microsoft. Gadzoox is a registered trademark of Gadzoox Networks, Inc. McDATA is a registered trademark and Fibre Channel Director is a trademark of McDATA 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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