Storage Systems Based on Second Generation Hi-Star Switched Architecture Deliver Massive Consolidation for Simplified Infrastructures, Protection for Critical Information, Optimized Resource Utilization, Reduced Total Cost of Ownership and a More Rapid ROI
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), today announced Hitachi Freedom Storage™ Lightning 9900™ V Series, its second generation of intelligent storage systems based on the Hi-Star™ switched architecture. With built-in virtualization-assist features, extensible support for connectivity options, and triple the bandwidth of its predecessor, the Lightning 9900 V Series provides enterprise storage customers with new levels of consolidation possibilities, complete protection of mission-critical data, and better optimization of resources to achieve reduced total cost of ownership, and a more rapid return on investment.
"The introduction of the new Lightning 9900 V Series, as part of our TrueNorth strategy, signals the beginning of a new era for enterprise storage data management," said Dave Roberson, president and COO, Hitachi Data Systems. "By exploiting the power of intelligent storage to simplify information management, the Lightning 9900 V Series offers our enterprise storage customers what they require to be successful in today's global economy — a truly scalable storage architecture that is simple to use and manage, that complements our new HiCommand Management Framework."
The Lightning 9900 V Series provides breakthrough simplicity through intelligent pooling of heterogeneous server platform data. Offering true scalability with up to 75TB of raw capacity, the Lightning 9900 V Series features the second-generation Hi-Star switched architecture, which delivers unparalleled bottleneck-free performance with nearly three times the aggregate bandwidth and twice the cache of the first generation Lightning 9900 Series. By simplifying and consolidating storage management, the Lightning 9900 V Series allows Hitachi's enterprise customers to build the storage network that best suits their needs while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) and delivering a more rapid ROI.
"Hitachi Data Systems has eclipsed its own best-in-class Lightning 9900 performance with the V series," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst, Enterprise Storage Group. "As storage performance once again becomes the bottleneck of the future, it's nice to know that HDS has already solved the problem. Being part of one of the world's largest R&D organizations (Hitachi) clearly has its benefits."
The Lightning 9900 V Series offers broad capabilities that allow for massive consolidation, extreme bandwidth, and native connectivity/protocol options. Two models are available in the series:
"We chose to install Hitachi Data Systems' Lightning 9900 V Series because we were seeking a comprehensive storage platform, complete with powerful management software and an intelligent hardware infrastructure," said Randy Overbey, Senior Vice President, Northern Trust. "The broad capabilities of this storage system have allowed us to consolidate and simplify our diverse infrastructure - leading to better performance and a lower total cost of ownership."
"With this new product, Sun is delivering reduced total cost of ownership and extreme data consolidation solutions to enterprise customers," said Bill Cook, vice president of sales, Sun Microsystems. "We're seeing enormous excitement and opportunities and delivering some serious heartburn to the folks in Hopkinton."
The new Lightning 9900V Series systems feature a virtualization assist layer to ease storage management complexity and better utilize resources. This virtualization layer offers the ability to mix heterogeneous servers on a single port and provide security to the Logical Unit (LUN) level. The Hitachi virtualization assist layer is comprised of three key elements that strategically clear the way for simplified management and massive consolidation:
For customers, the virtualization assist layer turns into significant savings in terms of smaller configurations, fewer switches, fibre channel cables and host bus adapters, thus reducing the overall cost and management of the Lightning 9900 V Series systems in SAN environments.
"Hitachi Data Systems' new Lightning 9900 V Series combines high performance with intelligent storage technology," said John Kelley, president and chief operating officer for McDATA. "Its built-in virtualization-assist functions complement McDATA's virtualization strategy as it enables enterprise customers to not only manage rapidly increasing amounts of data, but also to make optimal use of their stored data."
The Lightning 9900 V Series supports multiple storage port blades that support a variety of protocols today, including 1 and 2 gigabit per second Fibre Channel, ESCON, and FICON. The switch architecture and separation of control store from data store activity enables non-disruptive migration to different storage port protocol blades. This blade architecture is flexible, and will support future protocols, such as iSCSI, as market demand dictates.
"Companies are looking for solutions to handle existing storage needs seamlessly, while simultaneously preparing for future growth," said Mike Kahn, Chairman of technology acquisition consulting firm, The Clipper Group, Inc. in Wellesley, Massachusetts. "Hitachi Data Systems new Lightning 9900 V series is designed for the future, where high growth, massive consolidation, and extreme performance will be needed. Hitachi's unique switched bus architecture delivers superior performance for the very large capacities being consolidated in high-demand storage environments looking to simplify SAN management."
The Hitachi Freedom Storage Lightning 99000 V Series is a major component of the Hitachi TrueNorthä strategic direction announced earlier today. Hitachi TrueNorth views the future storage infrastructure as a synergistic combination of intelligent storage systems, comprehensive management software based upon open standards, and a collaborative business model. Together, they deliver set-and-forget storage management complemented by flexible capacity, performance, and connectivity.
"With TrueNorth, Hitachi sets the new standard for simplifying storage management in a networked world," commented Dave Roberson, President and COO, Hitachi Data Systems. "Our TrueNorth strategy cuts through the increasing complexity of managing storage resources and adapts storage environments to meet the demands for dynamic business growth. The combination of our TrueNorth strategy, HiCommand Management Framework, and our advanced Lightning 9900 V Series products will significantly change the data storage arena. With this news and our rapid growth, we are in a prime position to become the number one storage solution provider by 2004."
"BMC Software provides a storage management solution that currently supports a wide range of Hitachi devices, and we certainly plan support for the new 9900 V Series solution. By enabling IT Managers to protect their mission-critical data, this new storage system offers important benefits to enterprise storage customers who are finalizing their disaster prevention and recovery strategies."
-Helmuth Klemm, Vice President, Enterprise Storage Management, BMC Software
"The combination of best-of-breed products from Brocade and Hitachi Data Systems provides SAN customers the ability to scale storage more effectively, support continuous data availability, and reduce the overall cost of storage management. Leveraging the Brocade intelligent platform for networking storage, the Hitachi Freedom Storage environment can now deliver more efficient management of information resources."
-Jay Kidd, Vice President of Product Marketing, Brocade
"Companies are looking for solutions to handle existing storage needs seamlessly, while simultaneously preparing for future growth. Hitachi Data Systems new Lightning 9900 V series is designed for the future, where high growth, massive consolidation and extreme performance will be needed. Their trademark switched bus architecture is superior to traditional bus-based storage systems which create a bottleneck as capacity is added, lowering performance. In addition, higher overall capacity and throughput make the Lightning 9900 V Series the best solution for high-demand storage environments looking to simplify SAN management."
-Mike Kahn, Chairman, Clipper Group
"Hitachi's heterogeneous storage access layer and open API framework provide us with a simplified, intelligent and standards-based platform with which to develop enhanced data and storage management solutions. By joining this platform with CommVault Galaxy's high-performance data protection for SAN-based enterprises, customers can design and implement their storage infrastructures based on today's data availability requirements, without being constrained by the technical or architectural limitations of any particular vendor."
-Anand Prahlad, Vice President of Engineering, CommVault Systems
"Customers need to be able to manage their expanding and increasingly complex storage resources in an integrated manner. Computer Associates is supporting HDS's True North to help our customers fulfill this need, which is central to our own vision of 'Managing Storage without Boundaries.' In addition, by integrating the Hitachi Management framework into BrightStor, CA will be able to add the new 9900V to our already extensive portfolio of managed devices."
-Nigel Turner, Senior Vice President of BrightStor Solutions, Computer Associates
"As an early adopter of the Hitachi HiCommand Storage Management Framework APIs, CreekPath Systems has enjoyed a strong and fruitful relationship with Hitachi Data Systems. We continue to support the HiCommand environment, and are proud to participate in Hitachi's TrueNorth, a truly strategic vision of open and collaborative storage solutions that will meet the needs of enterprise customers. By participating in Hitachi's TrueNorth vision, CreekPath System expands an incredible relationship with not only Hitachi, but with many program participants to enable CreekPath to continue providing heterogeneous policy-based, process driven storage management."
-Mike Koclanes, CTO and Founder, CreekPath Systems
"Hitachi Data Systems' new Lightning 9900 V Series promises to deliver improved performance and manageability. Emulex host bus adapters provide an ideal storage networking interconnect solution for high performance, heterogeneous SANs utilizing Hitachi's sophisticated virtualization technology and management solutions."
-Mike Smith, Executive Vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Emulex Corporation
"Hitachi Data Systems has eclipsed it's own best-in-class 9900 performance with the V series. "As storage performance once again becomes the bottleneck of the future, it's nice to know that HDS has already solved the problem. Being part of one of the worlds largest R&D organizations (Hitachi) clearly has its benefits."
-Steve Duplessie, Founder and Senior Analyst, Enterprise Storage Group
"The major challenges facing today's IT executives are managing the phenomenal growth that's occurring in storage and reducing the associated total cost of ownership. When we talk about growth most frequently you think about growth in the areas of capacity and connectivity. However, the greatest growth these days is in access rates. The unique Hi-Star switched architecture of the Lightning 9900 family has allowed Hitachi Data Systems to address these critical areas."
-Chuck Standerfer, Senior Partner, The Evaluator Group
The simplified management of the Lightning 9900 V Series helps IT administrators keep pace with rapidly changing user requirements and market demands. Users can now take advantage of the business opportunities in their markets, instead of being bogged down by their network infrastructures. By combining the Lightning 9900 V Series with INRANGE's FC/9000, customers can consolidate storage resources and create simplified storage networks increasing efficiency and reducing total cost of ownership.
-Dan Raup, Vice President of Product Marketing, InRANGE Technologies
"We applaud Hitachi's True North vision, as we too recognize the importance of industry standards for storage area management, and we are proud to a part of Hitachi's True North Developer's program. By providing timely support in PATHLINE for the new 9900 V, our mutual customers benefit from enhanced manageability, superior automation, and lower TCO."
-Karen Dutch, Vice President of Marketing, InterSAN Inc.
"Hitachi Data Systems has done a magnificent job with the Freedom Storage family, offering new levels of performance and capability for high-end enterprise storage. By building to a standards-based framework, HDS assures these new storage systems are compatible with all SAN infrastructure products qualified with the current Lightning 9900 series. This includes nearly all of JNI's HBAs, including our 2 Gb Ready PCI, SBus and CompactPCI HBAs; JNI's 1 Gb enterprise and legacy HBAs, and JNI's Zentai High Availability SAN Solutions. Hitachi Data Systems' focus on compatibility, and its philosophy of embracing a truly open standards, policy-based approach to storage management is key to winning over its customers and partners."
-Neal Waddington, President and CEO, JNI Corporation
"Hitachi Data Systems' new Lightning 9900 V Series combines high performance with intelligent storage technology. Its built-in virtualization-assist functions complement McDATA's virtualization strategy as it enables enterprise customers to not only manage rapidly increasing amounts of data, but also to make optimal use of their stored data."
-John Kelley, President and Chief Operating Officer for McDATA
"Through our sales and support partnership, Nishan and Hitachi Data Systems are able to offer our mutual customers a cost-effective IP storage solution for metro or global TrueCopy disaster recovery applications. The introduction of the Lightning 9900 V Series, paired with our wire-speed multiprotocol IP Storage switches, further boosts the performance and around-the-clock availability that our customers demand, without taxing their existing infrastructure and staff."
-Mark Hicks, Vice President, Business Development, Nishan Systems
"We chose to install Hitachi Data Systems' Lightning 9900 V Series because we were seeking a comprehensive storage platform, complete with powerful management software and an intelligent hardware infrastructure. The broad capabilities of this storage system have allowed us to consolidate and simplify our diverse infrastructure — leading to better performance and a lower total cost of ownership."
-Randy Overbey, Senior Vice President, Northern Trust
"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. 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."
-Frank Berry, Vice President of Marketing, QLogic Corp
"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."
-Steve Denegri, Managing Director, RBC Capital Markets
"Our relationship with Hitachi Data Systems extends our line of Sun StorEdge Complete Storage Solutions to the high-end data center and helps enable extreme consolidation for Sun's customers. "Hitachi's TrueNorth effort compliments Sun's Storage ONE initiative. Together we are working toward the same common customer-friendly vision of driving open industry standards for storage management."
-Jim Hebert, General Manager, Network Storage, Sun Microsystems
"TSYS continues to lead the industry in creating innovative software and services for all types of electronic payments. We continually search for better methods to store, access and manage the enormous amount of data we use to support our 229 million global accounts, which generate more than 6 billion transactions each year. We chose Hitachi Data Systems as our primary storage partner to streamline this process and to meet and exceed our customer requirements. Hitachi Data Systems' 9900 V Series brings a superior product to market, and its design will be a valuable part of our success as we manage the challenge of growth. The 9900 V Series is simply the most complete storage solution in the market today."
-Michael Rogers, Manager Technical Support, Architecture, TSYS
"Hitachi and VERITAS Software have a strong, long-standing relationship founded upon delivering advanced storage management to the market. Hitachi's TrueNorth announcement supports VERITAS Software's ongoing efforts to tightly integrate our products with Hitachi Data Systems and offer proven functionality to our mutual customers."
-Kevin Reinis, Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances, VERITAS Software
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.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 http://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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