Hitachi Freedom Storage First to be Qualified forInteroperability with Cisco's MDS 9000 Family ofProducts
SANTA CLARA, California— February 18, 2003— Continuing todeliver on its TrueNorth™ commitment of providing customerchoice and open solutions, Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly ownedsubsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), today announced that it isthe first storage vendor to complete hardware interoperabilityqualification testing between its storage products and the CiscoMDS 9509 Multilayer Director, the Cisco MDS 9216 Multilayer FabricSwitch, and associated modules. Qualifying interoperability betweenHitachi Freedom Storage™ products and the Cisco MDS productfamily allows customers to enjoy the scalability of Cisco's newproducts with the proven reliability and performance of HitachiFreedom Storage.
Hitachi Data Systems also announced the signing of a non-bindingletter of intent to enter into negotiations with Cisco of anagreement to resell and support the Cisco MDS 9000 Family ofMultilayer Directors and Fabric Switches as part of its portfolioof SAN switches. Under the contemplated agreement, Hitachi DataSystems would make the Cisco MDS 9000 available to its customerswith full service and support.
"Ensuring that the Cisco MDS 9000 multilayer switchesinteroperate with Hitachi Freedom Storage is consistent with theTrueNorth vision of partnering with a broad range of companies todeliver storage solutions that benefit our mutual customers," saidScott Genereux, vice president, Global Marketing and BusinessDevelopment. "This agreement allows Hitachi Data Systems to offerour customers the scalability, security and performance they needwhile protecting their storage investment. The Cisco MDS family ofproducts is a great complement to the proven availability andperformance of Hitachi Freedom Storage."
"The completion of hardware interoperability between the CiscoMDS 9000 and the Hitachi Freedom Storage products is a significantmilestone for Cisco," said Luca Cafiero, senior vice president andgeneral manager of the Switching, Voice, and Storage TechnologyGroup at Cisco. "This achievement not only demonstrates Cisco'stechnical expertise in Fibre Channel switching, it is also animportant step in executing on our go-to-market strategies, whichinclude demand fulfillment and integrated services and supportthrough the major storage solution providers such as HDS. With thishardware interoperability, HDS will now be in the position to offerthese integrated services with the Cisco MDS 9000 platform."
The Cisco MDS 9000 Family is a comprehensive line of SANswitches for a wide variety of storage networks. The Cisco MDS 9000Family is designed to offer high performance and scalability, anddelivers intelligent network services such asmultiprotocol/multitransport integration, Virtual SANs (VSANs),security, advanced traffic management, sophisticated diagnosticsand unified SAN management. These products are designed to helpcustomers drive SAN consolidation, increase data availability, andmore efficiently manage their storage resources.
Hitachi Data Systems is uniquely positioned to help customerstake advantage of the scalability of Cisco's SAN infrastructure viathe ability to provide "virtual private storage" connectivity foras many as 4096 heterogeneous servers per Hitachi Freedom Storagesystem by isolating one server's storage domain from other servers'domains.
Hitachi Freedom Storage systems deliver set-and-forgetmanagement, complemented by flexible capacity, performance, andconnectivity. The Lightning 9900™ V Series and Thunder9500™ V Series storage systems form the foundation of anintelligent information infrastructure, enabling enterprisecustomers to simplify and consolidate storage management whilereducing total cost of ownership and maximizing return oninvestment.
Hitachi Data Systems enables organizations worldwide to exploitthe full potential of information. Adhering to our TrueNorth™vision and strategy, we provide customers with a broad range ofstorage solutions to simplify, protect and optimize theirinformation infrastructures. Our offerings include centralized anddistributed storage solutions complemented by best-of-breedproducts from channel partners and industry alliances.
With 2,700 employees, Hitachi Data Systems conducts businessthrough direct and indirect channels in the public, government andprivate sectors in over 170 countries and regions. Our customersinclude more than 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For moreinformation, please visit our Web site at www.hds.com.
Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leadingglobal electronics company, with approximately 320,000 employeesworldwide. Fiscal 2001 (ended March 31, 2002) consolidated salestotaled 7,994 billion yen ($60.1 billion). The company offers awide range of systems, products and services in market sectors,including information systems, electronic devices, power andindustrial systems, consumer products, materials and financialservices. For more information on Hitachi, please visit thecompany's Web site at http://global.hitachi.com.
Contacts: PR
Jodi Reinman, Hitachi Data Systems, (408) 970-1050, jodi.reinman@hds.com
TrueNorth, Hitachi Freedom Storage,Lightning 9900, and Thunder 9500 are trademarks of Hitachi DataSystems. Cisco and MDS 9000 are trademarks or registered trademarksof Cisco Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property oftheir respective owners.
© Hitachi Data Systems isregistered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademarkand service mark of Hitachi, Ltd.
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