With the shift toward Flash-based storage systems and integrated servers now well under way, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is betting that IT organizations will significantly shift their enterprise IT spending in different directions.
Looking to gain a bigger share of both the enterprise storage and server markets, HDS today extended its entire storage lineup and upgraded the Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) to include support for higher levels of increased automation and Flash-based storage. (The Hitachi UCP is based on the Cisco Unified Computing System platform that HDS has licensed.)
According to Ravi Chalaka, vice president of solutions marketing, these latest extensions to the HDS portfolio are part of a concerted effort to establish HDS more firmly in the data center at a time when the management of server and storage resources is converging.
At the same time, there has been a major shift toward Flash-based systems for primary storage. As a provider of high-performance magnetic disk systems, HDS is trying to make sure the company either holds onto or gains storage market share since primary storage systems rely more on Flash storage arrays.
To that end, HDS today also introduced a Hitachi Unified Storage VM system that (with a software upgrade due out later this year) will be able to support one million IOPS across 154TB of storage per array. HDS is also upgrading its magnetic disk-based network attached systems with new processors and an improved file system, which includes integrated data deduplication support that HDS says is now two times faster than any competitor.
The shift toward converged architecture within the data center has set off a major battle among storage and server providers who view the emergence of this new approach to managing data centers as an opportunity to usurp their rivals. While it’s too early to say who will ultimately win the battle for data center control, the fight for billions of dollars in converged infrastructure revenue is getting fiercer with each passing day.
