Hitachi's New Flash Storage To Tackle High Data Growth

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. unveiled new milestones to help organisations extract meaningful insights from information that will lead to innovation and inspire global action.

Current advancements in flash technology, advanced x86 servers and support for OpenStack are the next step in the overarching mission of the Hitachi and HDS Global Office of Technology and Planning (Global OTP) to leverage the unique engineering and R&D talents of both organisations to deliver proven solutions that address customer challenges.

“The new initiatives we are unveiling today further demonstrate our commitment to fostering a rich entrepreneurial spirit that produces innovative solutions for our customers,” said Akinobu Shimada, general manager, IT Platform Business Strategy & Planning Operation, IT Platform Division Group, Information & Telecommunication Systems Company, Hitachi. “We are excited to bring these innovative flash storage and server technologies to market, and to deliver on our shared goal to elevate the engineering power of these high-performing teams."

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Key deliverables announced include significant new flash storage developments that build on the unique HDS flash strategy, an extension of the HDS server and converged solutions offerings, and the company’s election to Gold Membership of the OpenStack Foundation.

Ushering in a New Era of Flash Storage

As part of a multi-phased strategy to incorporate innovative and patented Hitachi flash technology across the HDS storage portfolio, the companies are unveiling developments that extend their leadership in the flash storage space. These advancements will ease flash deployment, improve return on flash investments, and lower operating expenses compared to alternative solutions or single-purpose flash storage products. They include the expansion of unique Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage options and the continued flash storage performance leadership aspirations.

The Global OTP will continue to expand on this roadmap and Hitachi leadership in the flash storage market, which already includes over 60 patents granted or pending for Hitachi flash devices and software modifications. Further, the Global OTP will foster expansion of HDS and Hitachi research and development activity in flash storage and management. HDS and Hitachi will introduce significant advancements in flash management, protection and tiering, which will span compute and storage environments.

Hitachi Servers and Converged Solutions

In addition to delivering innovations in flash technology, Hitachi is leveraging a 50-year continuous history of mainframe and server technology development to expand its leadership in server products and converged solutions based on the Intel Xeon processor.

With a focus on datacenter requirements and a close engineering relationship with Intel, Hitachi has created x86-based servers with higher reliability, greater manageability and better performance than typical “commodity” designs, which provides customers with real advantages and more compelling converged solutions.

OpenStack for the Private Cloud and the Open Software-Defined Data Center

In an effort to realise an open approach to the software-defined data center (SDDC), the Global OTP also announced Hitachi and Hitachi Data Systems which have expanded their support of the OpenStack Foundation. Through a gold-level sponsorship, HDS and Hitachi intend to provide customers with the greatest flexibility and options to build fully integrated, programmatically controllable, scalable and cost-effective private cloud infrastructures that complement the OpenStack partner ecosystem. This expanded partnership reflects the long-standing Hitachi commitment to Open Source that ultimately enables and empowers IT organisations to drive innovation and immediate value within their environments.

“Our customers are looking to OpenStack as a way to drive flexibility and choice in their on-premise, private cloud infrastructures,” said Manju Ramanathpura CTO of Intelligent Platforms, Office of Technology & Planning at Hitachi Data Systems. “We have a long history of being active members of the Open Source community. Our extended commitment to the OpenStack Foundation is strategic to our vision for open innovation, which delivers the flexible and integrated private cloud environments that today’s enterprise customers and service providers require."

Global OTP

Announced in August 2013, and built on a foundation of leadership and expertise from Hitachi Data Systems and the IT Platform Division Group (ITPD) of Hitachi, the Global OTP combines the technical expertise and market insight of hundreds of engineers across both companies. The results of these efforts are driving innovations that span a variety of industries and applications, and deliver the critical solutions needed to help IT organisations lower costs, increase performance, and extract greater value from their information.

“The collaboration with Hitachi and the development of the Global OTP empower us to produce technology innovations that are wholly differentiated from our competitors and will speed the delivery of the software-defined data center,” said Michael Hay, vice president and chief engineer, Hitachi Data Systems. “By tapping the combined engineering talents and expertise of both companies, we are delivering solutions that help our customers innovate with information, improve their businesses, and deal with the mounting challenges of today’s data-driven world."