>Strong Hitachi Universal Storage Platform and Network Storage Controller Sales Enable Continued Marketshare Gains
SANTA CLARA, Calif.—June 11, 2007 —Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT) and the only provider of Services Oriented Storage Solutions, today announced that Hitachi Ltd. has shipped more than 6,000 intelligent virtual storage controllers worldwide, fueling further market share gains in the storage virtualization space.
"Hitachi continues to lead the industry in enterprise and modular-class storage controller-based virtualization deployments," said Carl Greiner, senior vice president, Infrastructure & Software, OVUM. "With over 6,000 virtual controllers shipped to date, Hitachi continues to deliver to users' desire for a unified, cost-effective, and heterogeneous storage infrastructure with common functionality and management."
Building on the momentum established by the category-defining Hitachi Universal Storage Platform launched in September 2004, Hitachi continues to push the innovation envelop in storage virtualization and expand its leadership position in the industry. The company’s latest flagship storage virtualization solution, the all-new Hitachi Universal Storage Platform™ V, delivers the benefits of proven large-scale external storage virtualization with thin provisioning—a new service called Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning. This enables customers to allocate virtual disk storage based on their anticipated future needs without needing to dedicate physical disk storage up front. If the need for additional physical disk arises, capacity can be purchased at a later time—at a lower cost—and implementation occurs transparently, without any disruption to mission-critical applications.
"Hitachi continues to provide customers the ultimate in enterprise storage innovation—taking customers Beyond Virtualization—combining the virtualization of volumes for non-disruptive data mobility with the virtualization of capacity within those volumes to directly address the power, cooling and space costs of allocated but unused space," said Hu Yoshida, CTO, Hitachi Data Systems. "The fact is that Hitachi has reached out beyond the confines of a single ‘box’ to do what nobody else can do—manage all Hitachi and non-Hitachi storage products and provide common management and common replication services—which is not a box, not a system, but a true storage services platform, the all-new Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V."
"The virtualization of storage assets is a high priority for enterprises that want to better manage all IT assets and respond rapidly to changing business requirements. IDC expects spending on block-level storage virtualization to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53.9% between 2006 and 2010," said Richard Villars, vice president, Storage Systems, at IDC. "Hitachi with its intelligent virtual storage controllers, was an early leader in the delivery of storage virtualization solutions; and with the recent announcement of its Hitachi Universal Platform V, is well positioned to help enterprises further accelerate data center and application consolidation, while providing a clear path for future information growth."
"Hitachi has reached a milestone in its storage products history. Clearly, their focused efforts on storage system innovation is resonating with users, and their successful execution is reflected in unit sales and numbers of third-party storage systems attached in a virtualized environment," said Tom Trainer, senior storage analyst at Evaluator Group, Inc.
"We believe that external storage virtualization will be requisite to storage networking." said Tony Asaro, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "External storage virtualization creates a linkage between otherwise disparate storage systems providing valuable functionality including data migrations, heterogeneous remote mirroring, and intelligent tiered storage. Hitachi truly understands this and is executing successfully on its vision. The quantifiable proof of this is 6,000 USP and NSC systems installed within production environments, which is a really big number especially in the enterprise-class storage market."
Hitachi Data Systems also recently launched the industry's first Services Oriented Storage Solutions. Based on the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V and a multitude of new storage software innovations, this intelligent architecture will dramatically alter the current stranglehold that storage architectures have on business flexibility by unleashing a services-oriented approach and specific functionality that enables business units and IT to tailor storage services to business needs and ensure that business units only pay for what is actually used.
About Hitachi Data Systems
Hitachi Data Systems Corporation provides Services Oriented Storage Solutions that enable heterogeneous storage to be dynamically provisioned according to business needs and centrally managed via industry-leading Hitachi storage virtualization software. As an integral part of the Hitachi Storage Solutions Group, Hitachi Data Systems delivers storage infrastructure platforms, storage management software, and storage consulting services through direct and indirect channels in over 170 countries and regions. Its customers include nearly 60-percent of Fortune 100 companies. For more information, visit the company's Web site at http://www.hds.com.
About Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT / TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 384,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2006 (ended March 31, 2007) consolidated revenues totaled 10,247 billion yen ($86.8 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.
Press Contact:
Hitachi Data Systems
Mary Ann Gallo
(408) 970-4836
mary.ann@hds.com
Investor Relations Contact:
Hitachi Data Systems
Laurie Spindler
(408) 970-7097
laurie.spindler@hds.com
