Announces Hitachi TrueNorth Strategic Open Information Management Initiative, New Hitachi Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 V Series, and Next Generation HiCommand Management Framework Software
Networld+Interop, Las Vegas , May 7th, 2002 — Hitachi Data Systems, the world's fastest growing enterprise storage provider, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT), will today make three major announcements from the NetWorld + Interop Conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The announcements will be made from a press event and Webcast live at the Venetian Hotel on today at 4:00 p.m. PDT. To register for the event or Webcast, go to www.hds.com/company/events/.
The first announcement outlines the Hitachi TrueNorthä initiative, a strategic vision that cuts through the increasing complexity of managing storage resources and adapts them to meet the demands of dynamic business growth. Hitachi's TrueNorth strategy is designed around three elements:
"With the Hitachi TrueNorth initiative, we're taking our collaborative approach to the next level. The HiCommandä Management Framework, based on industry standards, provides an open architecture into which products from our strategic partners can 'plug and play.' This allows businesses the freedom of choice to integrate best-of-breed solutions for storage management, simplifying and reducing the cost of operating their systems," said Dave Roberson, president and COO, Hitachi Data Systems. "The combination of the TrueNorth strategy and the new hardware and software products announced today further enhances Hitachi Data Systems position in its bid to become the number one storage solution provider by 2004."
As the first step toward achieving the vision set forth by the TrueNorth initiative, Hitachi Data Systems will unveil two new products designed to provide the storage industry with highly intelligent yet simplified storage infrastructure - the new Hitachi Freedom Storage™ Lightning 9900™ V Series intelligent storage system, and an open standards based, storage management framework that expands the capabilities of Hitachi's successful HiCommand device management software.
"Hitachi is extending its technological leadership with the introduction of the 9970V and 9980V model arrays. The performance levels that are achievable by these new offerings place Hitachi at the forefront of the enterprise storage market. Additionally, Hitachi appears to be well in tune with customer interests in storage management as its TrueNorth vision presents users with a framework that leverages existing infrastructure investment, and yet, offers a broad administrative architecture whose key function includes the automation of remedial storage tasks. The end result is a comprehensive storage architecture that is, in RBC's opinion, the most advanced on the market today," said Steve Denegri, Managing Director, RBC Capital Markets.
The Hitachi Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 V Series is the company's fourth-generation offering of intelligent storage systems, building on Hitachi Data Systems' leading Freedom Storage line. The Lightning 9900 V Series provides breakthrough simplicity through intelligent pooling of heterogeneous server platform data. It offers true scalability in capacity, performance, connectivity and cost, which enables consolidation of large storage array farms, for immediate reduction in total cost of ownership. Lightning 9900 V series products offer nearly ten times the aggregate bandwidth of the nearest competitor in the enterprise storage market, virtual ports for nearly unlimited connectivity, and extensible capabilities for multi-protocol support.
"With the 9900 V, Hitachi Data Systems demonstrates its ability to build an industry standard, production data center quality array - one that could steal the march from competing vendors," said John Webster, Founder, Data Mobility Group. "In this release, the company continues to build on its industry leading Hi-Starä embedded switch technology and adds an innovative array-based virtualization capability that can work stand-alone or in conjunction with other virtualization schemes from other vendors."
Hitachi's HiCommand Storage Management Framework is designed around a standard, Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) bus, that enables the plug in of standards based, Common Information Model (CIM). HiCommand provides an open platform for integrating products from Hitachi and its Independent Software Vendors. When fully populated, HiCommand will provide a policy-based automation foundation for management applications that will support many 'set-and-forget' functions. This new approach to managing storage will lead to many-fold improvement in the productivity of storage professionals, reducing to near-zero the incremental costs usually associated with managing vs. purchasing significant amounts of storage hardware.
"Our switch and HBA customers tell us their most critical storage needs involve managing the increasing volume of data, providing continuous access to information, adopting an evolving set of storage technologies, and meeting the escalating requirements to better utilize resources," said Frank Berry, vice president of marketing, QLogic Corp. "Hitachi Data Systems' True North initiative and HiCommand Management Framework cut through the increasing complexity of managing storage resources to meet the demands for dynamic business growth."
In celebration of the TrueNorth initiative, and these new two product introductions, Hitachi Data Systems will host a celebratory event at the Venetian Hotel on Tuesday, May 7 from 5:00-10:00 p.m. For an invitation to this event, or to hear more about the Lightning 9900 V Series and the new HiCommand Management Framework software, visit Hitachi Data Systems at the Las Vegas Convention Center, tradeshow booth # 8245.
Hitachi Data Systems, the fastest growing enterprise storage provider, is a leading supplier of storage hardware, software, solutions and services. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), Japan's largest electronics company, Hitachi Data Systems is committed to providing the storage infrastructure for the world's most information-intensive corporations. With 2,600 employees, Hitachi Data Systems does business through direct sales and resellers in the public and private sectors in 170 countries and regions on six continents. Its customers include more than 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.eu.hds.com.
Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 2001 (ended March 31, 2002) consolidated sales of 7,993.7 billion yen ($60.1 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 www.hitachi.com.
Contacts: PR
Jodi Reinman, Hitachi Data Systems, (408) 970.1050, jodi.reinman@hds.com
At an exchange rate of 133 yen to the dollar.
Freedom Storage, Lightning 9900, and HiCommand are trademarks of Hitachi Data Systems.
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