Hitachi Data Systems Reinforces its Commitment to Flash-based Solid State Storage Technology

Supercharges Universal Storage Platform V Family with Flash-based Solid State Drives Optimized for High Performance Storage Environments

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 15, 2008 — Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT) and the only provider of Services Oriented Storage Solutions, today announced general availability of flash-based solid state drives (SSDs) for the Hitachi Universal Storage Platform™ V and VM. Innovative flash-based drive technology combined with Hitachi’s world-class virtualized storage services platform is designed to provide exceptional performance of business-critical applications, with significantly improved utilization, while also reducing power and cooling consumption.

“The integration of flash-based SSDs on the Hitachi USP V and VM validates IDC’s prediction that this class of storage will become more viable for mainstream storage as enterprise data environments become more diversified,” said Jeff Janukowicz, research manager, solid state drives & HDD components at IDC. “We forecast SSD adoption to increase more than 70 percent on a compound annual basis through 2012, with enterprise storage applications playing a key role for I/O-intensive applications. Flash-based SSDs in the USP V will help differentiate Hitachi Data Systems high-end offerings when deployed in combination with the company’s virtualization, thin provisioning and integrated management features.”

Flash-based SSDs rely on high-speed flash memory to store and retrieve data, and are uniquely designed without any mechanical components, which provide a fast, cost-attractive, and extremely energy-efficient solution for speeding heavy I/O workload traffic required of high-performance enterprise storage applications, such as online transaction processing, seismic data rendering, currency trading, and many other real-life customer use cases.

“We are now offering customers the option of flash-based SSDs for the market-leading Hitachi USP V Platform because we recognize the needs of enterprise customers for state-of-the-art drive technology that can significantly boost performance-intensive applications,” said Roberto Basilio, vice president storage platforms product management, Hitachi Data Systems. “Complementary to traditional hard disk drives, flash-based SSDs offer customers the ability to store working data, and move less frequently accessed data to a lower tier of storage, which translates into greater business productivity and lower OPEX costs.”

The Hitachi Storage Command software management suite fully supports this new “tier zero” flash-based storage tier, enabling storage administrators to simplify the ability to replicate, intelligently tier, manage, and dynamically provision their storage, with a single set of management tools that includes Hitachi replication software technology in addition to the advanced functionality of the industry’s first enterprise-class thin provisioning technology, Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning.

In addition, Hitachi Data Systems also announced planned support for the new flash-based drives recently introduced by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (see separate press release).

Availability
Hitachi Data Systems plans to offer flash-based SSDs in 73 GB and 146 GB capacities for the Hitachi USP V and USP VM storage systems in CQ1 2009.