Company Continues to Deliver Advanced Virtualization Solutions While Competitors Struggle
Hitachi Brings High-End Functionality—Embedded Virtualization Layer, Logical Partitioning, Heterogeneous Replication, Global Cache Architecture and Mainframe Connectivity—to the Rapidly Growing Midrange, SMB Markets
SANTA CLARA, Calif.—July 11, 2005—Building on the worldwide market momentum of the Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform—with over 1,000 units sold of all manufactured variants, and demand towering at record levels—Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), today ushered in a new wave of virtualization and architectural breakthroughs to the midrange storage market with the introduction of the Hitachi TagmaStore™ Network Storage Controller model NSC55, which successfully delivers all of the rich, advanced functionality of the high-end to the broader midrange and SMB markets. The product enters the market in full force with sales support from Hitachi Data Systems' global direct sales force and over 500 Channel partners.
The NSC55 shatters through the barriers of conventional midrange storage products by delivering all of the revolutionary functionality of the TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform—including its massively parallel crossbar switch architecture for high availability and performance; large-scale controller-based virtualization layer for ease-of-management; logical partitioning for application quality-of-service; storage-agnostic universal replication for business continuance; and a rich set of software tools—in a powerful, rackmounted, modular form factor, attractively priced for mid-sized companies. Only Hitachi, along with its valued partners, offer this level of enterprise-class functionality at midrange storage prices, proving that customers no longer have to sacrifice advanced storage and virtualization functionality due to budgetary concerns.
The NSC55 is effectively a miniaturized version of the industry-leading TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform, with the same proven microcode and all of the same software and virtualization capabilities. The NSC55 seamlessly manages up to 16 petabytes of externally attached heterogeneous storage—including support for the latest high-end and midrange storage systems from EMC, IBM, Hitachi, HP, and Sun, among others. No other midrange storage system has an enterprise-proven, large-scale embedded virtualization layer that supports heterogeneous storage and does not depend on external switches, appliances or host-based software.
"Hitachi has the clearest and strongest commitment for storage virtualization compared to any of the other leading storage system vendors," said Tony Asaro, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "For Hitachi, the Universal Storage Platform and the Network Storage Controller are its flagship products and that is why they are in an excellent position to dominate the market."
"For many workloads, Hitachi's TagmaStore NSC55 architecture is more scalable, compelling, and architecturally sound than the virtualization appliance approach as seen in IBM's SAN Volume Controller or EMC's recently announced Invista product," said Dave Vellante, CEO of ITCentrix, an independent software and services firm. "ITCentrix believes Hitachi has achieved key advantages by placing the locus of control close to the data versus in the network."
"We believe that the announcement of the NSC55 will be one of the most significant storage virtualization announcements that will be made this year in that the market opportunity for the NSC is broader and more competitive with a larger set of virtualization products than Hitachi's previously announced Universal Storage Platform," said John Webster, senior analyst and founder, Data Mobility Group. "Competitors who may have once thought that HDS is only going after the high-end storage virtualization opportunities will now have a major new force to contend with."
The NSC55 easily surpasses the limitations of current midrange "disk storage only" products as well as functionally-limited switch or appliance-based "virtualization-only" offerings, by offering customers the best of both worlds with the industry's leading rich, high-end storage functionality—and enterprise-proven virtualization software—all united in a rackmounted, modular form factor at a midrange price.
Commenting on today's announcement, Hu Yoshida, chief technology officer, Hitachi Data Systems, said "Business drivers like operational risk, compliance, and non-stop availability are the same for small and mid-size customers as they are for enterprise customers. The only difference is in cost and scale. There are many small and mid-sized companies whose storage requirements have grown to require the same level of availability, performance, and protection enjoyed by high-end enterprises. However, they lack the staff and the data center infrastructure to support enterprise storage. Now, with the NSC55, they finally have a product that is specifically optimized for midrange environmentals and costs, and delivers all of the advanced features and functionality of the industry's leading high-end platform. In addition, the NSC55's simple approach to virtualization minimizes the need to increase staffing as storage demands increase."
Further demonstrating Hitachi's continued storage technology leadership, the NSC55 offers more internal bandwidth, cache, and connectivity than any comparative midrange storage offering. Delivering nearly four times the internal bandwidth (12.1 GigaBytes per second), 16 times the cache (64GB), six times the Fibre Channel port count (48), four times the FICON ports (16) and over twice the LUNs (16,384) of other systems, the NSC55 effectively redefines midrange storage, setting a new industry standard.
Additional NSC55 features include embedded NAS Blades, mainframe connectivity, and native disk-based Write Once Read Many (WORM) software for immutable record retention and the creation of compliant storage environments. Hitachi is the only vendor providing WORM functionality in a mainframe environment, making the NSC55 ideal for mainframe optical tape replacements.
"There has been several billion dollars invested in network-based virtualization over the last five years, and there is still not a single, reliable product out in the market today," said Rachel Young, vice president, Global Marketing, Hitachi Data Systems. "There is no need to put your valuable data at risk with a virtualization technology that is unproven, has myriad technical issues, and is lashed together from off-the-shelf parts when you can leverage the millions of lines of proven code that power the world's largest enterprises. There is nothing in the industry that compares to the technical simplicity and elegance of Hitachi's controller-based approach to virtualization. Put simply, if our competitors could design a virtualization product similar to Hitachi's, they would."
"Lacking a saleable virtualization product, the interim strategy of our competitors is to overwhelm customers with philosophical and academic discussions of virtualization techniques in hopes of delaying purchases until they are ready with a product that actually works," said Claus Mikkelsen, chief scientist, Hitachi Data Systems. "Implementing a virtualization engine that can manage, provision, and drive tiered storage environments is critical in order to reduce the soaring operational costs of midrange customers who face the same business demands and challenges as enterprise storage users. Hitachi's ability to separate intelligent controllers from disks has provided us with first mover advantage in this industry, enabling us to solve these problems for customers now—not later. This, of course, places Hitachi in the enviable position of effectively commoditizing our competitors' disk storage products with our leading virtualization technology."
"A challenge for midrange customers is to deliver enterprise-level service with limited resources. Hitachi has addressed this issue with the Network Storage Controller by providing high-end Universal Storage Platform features at costs that make sense to midrange customers," said Dave Vellante. "Based on our extensive analysis of a range of configurations, we see impressive financials for even smaller installations. In a comparison between Hitachi and competitive best-of-breed midrange products, using a configuration of 10 terabytes with 10 terabytes of externally managed storage, in a replicated environment, ITCentrix found for an additional $80,000 in storage costs, the Hitachi approach will potentially deliver a 483-percent internal rate of return and a $1 million dollar net present value over three years."
"The midrange storage market is growing so rapidly that customers of all sizes are dealing with escalating levels of complexity but don't have the necessary resources to manage it all," said Tony Asaro. "The Hitachi NSC55 offers an impressive combination of being a world-class storage system and an advanced storage virtualization platform focused on mid-tier environments. The NSC55 enables customers to implement intelligent tiered storage, manage multiple storage systems using one set of tools, provide heterogeneous remote mirroring, and load balance capacity and performance as needed. ESG research shows that customers are looking to storage virtualization solutions and HDS now has enterprise-class and midrange solutions that are extremely compelling."
The NSC55 completely revolutionizes the midrange storage market as the first product in this segment architected with a multi-processor global cache disk controller that can be accessed by any server through a non-blocking crossbar switch. Access to storage can be load balanced across multiple virtual host ports since all servers can view the same cache image. In sharp contrast, comparative midrange storage systems have no central cache image, which limits data access from attached servers. Applications cannot load balance across a typical midrange dual controller architecture since the caches in the controllers are separate, an ongoing issue for mid-sized businesses whose storage requirements have expanded to the next level of availability and performance.
Featuring the massively parallel Hitachi Universal Star Network™ crossbar switch architecture, the NSC55 introduces levels of availability and multi-tasking capabilities unheard of in this market to date—capabilities, such as running multiple data-intensive applications concurrently, which many companies without raised floor data center environments cannot obtain with their existing midrange products. The architecture's switched internal networks separate cache and path resources for data and control information, enabling the intelligent system to dynamically optimize storage resources to meet application requirements for both performance and availability.
With this architecture, powered by 32 multi-processors designed for extremely heavy I/O workloads—as compared to two general purpose laptop processors found in comparative midrange offerings—the NSC55 is truly the first midrange storage system that is designed for 7/24 business operations, and is backed by a 100% Data Availability Guarantee.
This NSC55 architecture enables mid-sized companies to enjoy the same benefits from Hitachi Data Systems Services Oriented Storage Solutions™ solutions as larger enterprises have up to this point. Customers can now virtualize large storage pools to simplify management, carve up internal and external storage resources to ensure application quality-of-service, move data dynamically and non-disruptively across tiers of storage for archival purposes, copy across heterogeneous storage for business continuity, and move mainframe data to SATA-based storage to replace expensive mainframe storage systems or less-than-optimal tape.
"Selecting the NSC55 is a no risk decision for customers," said Fred Huang, vice president, Storage Infrastructure Product Management, Hitachi Data Systems. "You have to buy a disk controller no matter what, so why not buy the latest, greatest midrange technology with a global cache architecture, and enjoy the sheer business benefits of that alone. Then, when you are ready for virtualization and external attachments, simply add the software and grow from there. Hitachi's approach is much simpler than what other vendors are currently trying to do. The NSC55 clearly represents a new paradigm of economic bandwidth, availability, and connectivity for the midrange."
Claus Mikkelsen added "Just as Hitachi fundamentally changed the dynamics of the high-end space when it introduced its crossbar switch architecture in 2000 and forced competitors to spend the next several years patching up their antiquated shared bus architectures in a last ditch effort to catch up, with the introduction of the NSC, Hitachi has now effectively changed the dynamics of the midrange space by introducing the same battle-proven architecture in a modular, rackmounted form factor at an attractive midrange price. As a result of today's announcement, we expect to accelerate our marketshare in the midrange space as competitors scramble to revamp their outdated midrange storage offerings."
Please reference other Hitachi Data Systems press releases issued today, including: "Hitachi Delivers Next Generation, Channel-Optimized SMB Storage Lineup" and "Hitachi Launches Full Scale Assault on Midrange Storage Market."
For additional information about Hitachi Data Systems' latest innovations in the midrange market, visit www.hds.com
Hitachi Data Systems leverages global R&D resources to develop storage solutions built on industry-leading technology with the performance, availability and scalability to maximize customers' ROI and minimize their risk. By focusing on the customer's perspective as we apply the best hardware, software, and services from Hitachi and our partners, we uniquely satisfy our customers' business needs. With 2,900 employees, Hitachi Data Systems conducts business through direct and indirect channels in the public, government and private sectors in over 170 countries and regions. Its customers include more than 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For more information, please visit our Web site at http://www.hds.com.
Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 347,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2004 (ended March 31, 2005) consolidated sales totaled 9,027.0 billion yen ($84.4 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 Website at http://www.hitachi.com.
Blanc & Otus Public Relations
Quinn Daly
(415) 856-5152
qdaly@blancandotus.com
Blanc & Otus Public Relations
Wadooah Wali
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wwali@blancandotus.com
© 2005, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. Hitachi Data Systems is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. HiCommand is a registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. TagmaStore, Universal Star Network and Services Oriented Storage Solutions are trademarks of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. All other trade names, trademarks, and service marks used herein are the rightful property of their respective owners.
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