Hitachi Data Systems Provides Worldwide Sales Force and Support for PATHLINE, InterSAN's Award-Winning Storage Area Management Solution
STORAGE NETWORKING WORLD — ORLANDO, Florida — Oct. 28, 2002 — Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT), and InterSAN, Inc., the leading provider of applications-based storage area management (SAM) software, today announced a reseller agreement that will make InterSAN® PATHLINE® software immediately available through Hitachi Data Systems' worldwide sales force. This agreement, which builds on the relationship InterSAN and Hitachi Data Systems established in July 2001, provides InterSAN with worldwide sales and support and gives Hitachi Data Systems an award-winning storage area management solution to offer its global customer base.
Aligned with the Hitachi TrueNorth™ vision, the expanded relationship provides customers with best-of-breed, open, and standards-based storage solutions. A member of the TrueNorth Developers Program since July 2001, InterSAN was among the first companies to adopt Hitachi HiCommand™ APIs to integrate PATHLINE software with Hitachi Freedom Storage™ systems.
"With the increasingly competitive nature of the storage industry, the critical challenge for a startup is to establish presence and credibility quickly," said Nancy Marrone, senior analyst of Enterprise Storage Group. "Strategic distribution and support agreements between startups and established storage vendors allow a large number of customers to purchase industry-leading solutions through their trusted storage vendor. This announcement between InterSAN and Hitachi Data Systems is a perfect example of what startups have to accomplish to compete in today's very crowded market."
Hitachi Data Systems will immediately begin a phased offering of InterSAN's award-winning PATHLINE software through its established direct sales force and reseller networks in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. InterSAN will certify Hitachi Data Systems through InterSAN's Professional Services Partner Program (PSP) to ensure that Hitachi Data Systems' customers are offered a comprehensive suite of high-quality storage area management consulting, implementation, and training services to complement PATHLINE software. Joint customers will now have access to advanced storage solutions that allow them to manage growth while providing quality of services in an affordable, manageable, and secure environment.
Integrated closely with Hitachi Data Systems' HiCommand Device Manager, PATHLINE software will automatically provision, manage, and monitor the Hitachi Freedom Storage family of products in a distributed storage-networking environment. By giving customers the flexibility to automatically provision storage-based on defined business policies and to manage the continuous flow of data through the storage network, PATHLINE software enhances the power of Hitachi Freedom Storage systems, improving application availability, optimizing resource utilization, and reducing staffing costs. PATHLINE software requires HiCommand Device Manager to support Hitachi Freedom Storage systems.
"A major tenet of our TrueNorth vision is the open and collaborative approach we take in working with key software and hardware providers who help us to address customer's heterogeneous storage management challenges," said Scott Genereux, vice president of Global Marketing and Business Development, Hitachi Data Systems. "Important vendors, such as InterSAN, enable Hitachi Data Systems to offer its worldwide customer base the freedom of choice to build an open storage environment with best-of-breed solutions and the highest performance storage systems. This allows our customers to simplify, protect, and optimize their information infrastructures while reducing the total cost of ownership and accelerating the return on their IT investment."
"Today, InterSAN has the technology, the product, and the focus to capture the SAM market," said Chris Melville, CEO and president, InterSAN. Now, through our worldwide reseller relationship with Hitachi Data Systems, we have the reach to deliver on that promise to every customer with a growing SAN, and a growing need for the best software available to manage it. This agreement cements PATHLINE software firmly in place as a required business solution for managing any truly open storage network."
InterSAN PATHLINE is the first application-based SAM software that automates the management of shared storage services across the entire life cycle from planning, implementing, and provisioning to monitoring. Using patented Virtual Private DataPath™ (VPD™) technology to provide end-to-end path management, PATHLINE software manages the relationship between applications and their data storage, masking the complexities of disparate SAN devices and technology. With PATHLINE software, customers can proactively track application service level agreements (SLAs), fully automate and optimize storage provisioning, and control complex, geographically distributed multivendor SANs from a single console. Unique business-relevant views allow customers to monitor and control storage networks from the perspective of the application, line of business, location, or by storage domain. PATHLINE software delivers truly heterogeneous interoperability by supporting the storage industry's most strategic products from virtually all leading vendors.
Hitachi Data Systems is committed to enabling organizations worldwide to exploit the full potential of information. By following and deploying our TrueNorth™ strategy, we provide customers with a broad range of storage solutions to simplify, protect and optimize their information infrastructures. Our offerings include enterprise and modular storage systems and software, professional services, fully complemented by best-of-breed products through industry alliances. With 2,700 employees, Hitachi Data Systems conducts business through direct sales and resellers in the public, government and private sectors in over 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 a leading global electronics company, with approximately 320,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2001 (ended March 31, 2002) consolidated sales totaled 7,994 billion yen ($60.1 billion*). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors, including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's Web site at http://global.hitachi.com.
*At an exchange rate of 133 yen to the dollar.
InterSAN, Inc. is the leading provider of applications-based storage area management (SAM) software that enables enterprises to reduce the complexity and costs of managing large heterogeneous storage networks. InterSAN PATHLINE software is the industry's first solution to deliver automated, policy-driven shared storage services life cycle management based on business metrics. Based on patented Virtual Private DataPath™ technology, the InterSAN® PATHLINE® software solution improves application availability, data security, and service-level management. By centralizing and automating the management of complex storage networking infrastructure, PATHLINE software improves operational efficiency and business scalability for large enterprises. PATHLINE software has been honored as Network Magazine's storage management 2002 Product of the Year, and InterSAN is listed on Byte and Switch's list of Top 10 Privately Held Companies. For more information about InterSAN, call
Contacts: PR
Jodi Reinman, Hitachi Data Systems,
Freedom Storage, Lightning 9900, and Thunder 9200 are trademarks of Hitachi Data Systems. InterSAN, the InterSAN logo, PATHLINE, and Virtual Private DataPath are trademarks or registered trademarks of InterSAN in the United States and other countries. © Hitachi Data Systems is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd.
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