Hitachi Data Systems Introduces Storage Capacity Reclamation Guarantee Program

SANTA CLARA, Calif., January 28, 2010  Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT) and the only provider of Service Oriented Storage Solutions, today announced the Storage Capacity Reclamation Guarantee program. The program offers customers around the world the ability to reduce their storage capacity by 50 percent or more by using Hitachi virtualization technologies.

According to April Adams, Research Director, Gartner: "End users considering products may find guarantees useful if they are being asked to provide additional justification for storage purchases during tough economic times."

By reducing storage capacity, Hitachi Data Systems lowers customers' operational costs through simpler storage management, more efficient use of resources and space, reduced power and cooling costs and avoided purchase of unnecessary frames and drives. As the leader in storage virtualization and thin provisioning, Hitachi Data Systems offers Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software to help customers reclaim storage that is stranded due to traditional thick provisioning processes. Hitachi Data Systems has helped customers realize more than 65 percent reduction in storage capacity by applying best practices in cost savings.

"While the economic forecast for 2010 is optimistic, we do not expect to see the drive to reduce costs to subside," said Asim Zaheer, vice president of Corporate and Product Marketing, Hitachi Data Systems. "We are more committed than ever to helping our customers consolidate costs, both operational and capital, while still improving data center performance." 

Hitachi Data Systems is demonstrating its commitment to help customers reduce operational and capital costs with a money back guarantee in its Storage Capacity Reclamation Guarantee Program. To increase value to their business, organizations are establishing scalable storage infrastructure by leveraging current investments, increasing return on assets (ROA) and lowering operational costs. Hitachi Data Systems hardware, software and services for storage reclamation, dynamic provisioning and virtualization have a combined economic impact that drastically reduces the operating costs of a customer's storage environment.

Virtualization improves operational efficiency by helping customers reclaim and optimize use of storage assets to better align to business requirements. The life of existing assets is extended through higher utilization to:
??? Lower long term storage costs improve ROA and produce measurable savings
??? Decrease waste through dynamic provisioning
??? Give significant savings through storage tiering
??? Reduce capital investments by reclaiming storage using the Zero Page Reclaim feature of Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software, which reclaims unused storage space from previously allocated storage

The 50 percent guarantee is for the raw storage capacity for migrating from third party RAID-1 source environments to dynamically provisioned RAID-5 target environments. For any third party RAID-5 environment, Hitachi Data Systems will guarantee a 20 percent storage capacity reduction.

If the guaranteed storage capacity reduction is not achieved, Hitachi Data Systems will rebate money to the customer for the difference between the storage reduction guaranteed and the storage used.

Hitachi Data Systems products and services included in the Storage Capacity Reclamation Guarantee Program include:
??? Hitachi Universal Storage Platform V or VM
??? Disk capacity equivalent to the guaranteed amount
??? Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software
??? Hitachi Storage Reclamation Service