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Shoden announces Major Milestone on the Road to Enabling Data Centre Transformation from Hitachi

Shoden announces New High-end Storage Virtualisation Platform with Industry’s First Dynamic 3D Scaling from Hitachi

Delivers up to 33 Percent Reduction in Total Cost of Storage Ownership and More Than 30 Percent Reductions in Power, Cooling and Floor Space Costs 

JOHANNESBURG, March 2011 Shoden Data Systems (Pty) Ltd. is pleased to announce the resounding success of the new enterprise storage array from Hitachi Data Systems. After the launch of the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) in September 2010, many large South African clients have introduced this technology into their data centres.

“Understanding the design philosophy of Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), we anticipated massive interest in the new VSP technology within our clients. The evolution of the enterprise storage from HDS over the last decade has resulted in what is undeniably the most technologically advanced enterprise storage platform in the market today. The uptake from clients in the last quarter was phenomenal.” Said Adrian Wood, Business Development Manager, Shoden Data Systems.

The announcement of the VSP was done in Santa Clara, California where Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), further solidified their position as the leader in storage virtualisation with a series of announcements that represented a major milestone in the company’s vision of data centre transformation. At a Hitachi Information Forum event at the Santa Clara Convention Centre, Hitachi Data Systems unveiled its new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) and new Hitachi Command Suite management software that together set a new industry benchmark for virtualised, enterprise-class IT solutions.    

The key message behind the launch was a focus on developing technology that solves customer’s challenges at many levels.

"Under conditions of shrinking budgets, organisational change and increased competition, enterprises are being challenged to make information both available and secure while their IT organisations are asked to do more with less,” said Jack Domme, CEO, Hitachi Data Systems. “We are solving the industry’s most pressing challenges with our approach of one platform for all data, coupled with our leadership in virtualisation technology. Our new Virtual Storage Platform represents another major step toward transforming the way companies implement IT and turn their raw data into valuable information that offers scalability and adaptability for the future.”

“Organisations face the daunting tasks of dealing with rapid data growth and the efficient transformation of their data centre environments,” said Richard Villars, vice president, Storage and IT Executive Strategies, IDC. “The expansion of the Hitachi Data Systems business vision beyond storage products to delivering efficient, scalable and information-enabling IT solutions will better arm customers with a platform that enables IT transformation.”

Exploding Data Growth: Adding Capacity Not Enough
According to recent research, data is growing at a rate of approximately 50 percent year-over-year, with unstructured data such as emails, images, and audio and video files growing at 10 times the rate of structured data. In the healthcare industry alone, the amount of data being generated quadruples every two years. The rapidly rising operational costs to manage this increasing volume of data, which now amount to more than 65 percent of the total cost of storage, have caused IT departments to realise that yesterday’s strategies of simply adding more storage or increasing computing capacity are no longer viable.

Data Centre Transformed
The concept of data centre transformation – turning the data centre into a flexible and efficient “information centre” that can quickly adapt to changing business needs – has been a driving force in the IT industry for several years. By delivering on its vision that IT must be virtualised, automated, cloud-ready and sustainable, Hitachi Data Systems is enabling customers to transform their aging data centres into information centres that closely align business objectives with infrastructure performance to optimise return on assets.

Introducing 3D Advancements in IT
At the heart of Hitachi Data Systems vision for data centre transformation is a single, virtualised platform for all data with the ability to manage multivendor environments. The new Virtual Storage Platform is the industry’s first 3D scaling storage platform designed for all data types. The Virtual Storage Platform is the only solution that can dynamically scale up, scale out and scale deep to flexibly adapt for performance, capacity and virtualisation of multivendor storage. As such, it can dynamically scale from small configurations and adapt as customers’ needs evolve.

The new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Hitachi Command Suite management software provide significant benefits in performance, flexibility, power consumption and total cost of ownership (TCO) to customers. In comparison to non-tiered and non-virtualised storage platforms, the new solution from Hitachi Data Systems enables customers to reduce disk drive costs by up to 70 percent through the use of tiered storage, storage reclamation and dynamic tiering. Leveraging the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, customers can realise up to 33 percent reduction in TCO per terabyte in the first year of implementation. In addition, the new platform can achieve more than 30 percent reductions in power, cooling and floor space costs when compared with other high-end storage platforms currently available today.

As the leader in storage virtualisation, Hitachi Data Systems works closely with a vast network of strategic partners to provide integrated solutions to customers.

Delivering the Vision
The underlying success factor of Hitachi technology is their proven ability to deliver both technology and the associated business benefits. Although many other vendors announce key features, Hitachi always delivers on day one as many of the new features are an evolution of mature capabilities from their previous generation technologies. For example, the ability to provide sub LUN tiering (launched as Hitachi Dynamic Tiering) is based on a number of existing technologies that have been available in the previous generation USP-V technology and which has been implemented in many production sites internationally for years.

“Clients who invest in Shoden and Hitachi know that the technology is data centre ready and will provide them with all the operational and business benefits as promised. Hitachi’s track record in terms of ability to consistently deliver on new technology is unquestionable,” continues Adrian Wood, “which makes for great partnerships to develop between our clients and ourselves.”

Web Resources

• Announcement hub: www.hds.com/go/virtualizeIT
• Hitachi VSP: www.hds.com/products/storage-systems/hitachi-virtual-storage-platform.html
• Hitachi Command Suite: www.hds.com/products/storage-software/hitachi-command-suite.html
• Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/HDScorp

About Shoden

Shoden Data Systems PTY (Ltd.) provides innovative, high-end technology solutions to leading organisations across Africa, allowing them to gain what Shoden refers to as:“The data centre advantage”. Shoden aims to deliver the data centre advantage by understanding clients’ challenges and implementing optimised solutions that address these challenges, coupled with excellent service and support.

About Hitachi Data Systems

Hitachi Data Systems provides best-in-class information technologies, services and solutions that deliver compelling customer ROI, unmatched return on assets (ROA) and demonstrable business impact. With a vision that IT must be virtualised, automated, cloud-ready and sustainable, Hitachi Data Systems offers solutions that improve IT costs and agility. With more than 4,500 employees worldwide, Hitachi Data Systems does business in more than 100 countries and regions. Hitachi Data Systems products, services and solutions are trusted by the world’s leading enterprises, including more than 70 percent of the Fortune 100 and more than 80 percent of the Fortune Global 100. Hitachi Data Systems believes that data drives our world – and information is the new currency. To learn more, visit: 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 360,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2009 (ended March 31, 2010) consolidated revenues totaled 8,968 billion yen ($96.4 billion). Hitachi will focus more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes information and telecommunication systems, power systems, environmental, industrial and transportation systems, and social and urban systems, as well as the sophisticated materials and key devices that support them. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.

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