Hitachi Data Systems, one of the leading global players
in the enterprise storage segment, recently announced its TrueNorth Solutions
Alliance program. The company is also making a foray in the mid-range storage
space. Its mid-range shipment will grow approximately 31 percent sequentially to
roughly 2,100 TB, representing 12 percent of the estimated total TB shipped for
the second half of FY2003. Patrick Lim, vice-president and general manger (Asia
South), Hitachi Data Systems, talks about the Alliance program and the need to
shift to the mid-range space. Excerpts…
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What does Hitachi Data Systems plans to achieve with
the TrueNorth Solutions Alliance?
The TrueNorth Solutions Alliance launched in India in December 2002 (globally in
May 2002) is basically a new partnering initiative based on a collaborative
business model. It is aimed at increasing our bouquet of offerings by means of
bringing best-of-breed products through industry alliances. The alliance
consists of four programs–TrueNorth Solutions Partner Program (for channel
partners), TrueNorth Global Solutions Partners Program (for global SIs),
TrueNorth Technology Partners Program (for SAN solutions partners and ISVs), and
TrueNorth Developer Partners Program (for storage application developers). It
also focuses on the training and certification aspect of all partners.
What was the need for forming such an alliance?
It came from repeated demands from our clients who wanted us to provide those
parts of the entire network solutions that we were not offering. For example, we
were traditionally in the SAN space, while many of our customers demanded that
they also required NAS solutions for which they had to go to multiple vendors.
Now as part of our alliance program, we are collaborating with Network Appliance
for enterprise NAS gateway and storage management solutions. There was also a
worldwide trend of moving towards open standards. For example, we were already
providing Sun and HP boxes as their partner, but now under the new program, all
our channel and solution partners will provide the clients support for Sun and
HP boxes.
What are the dynamics in India?
At present, we have three channel partners in India, namely Apara, Tata Infotech,
and Lanbit. Under this program, we will be ramping up the operations to have a
multi-tiered scheme of 15 partners. Our customers include most of the leading
names in the telecom, banking, and software development space in India. We
expect to grow by 12 percent in FY 2003, reaching $2.33 million from $2.07
million last year.
How do you intend to tap the mid-range storage
market?
In the high-end RAID market, we are currently almost tied up with EMC for
leadership. Our new solutions look to increase penetration in growing verticals
such as retail, life sciences, health care, and rich media. The new high-end
9570V array can scale to 32.7 TB. Its internal bandwidth of 4.2 Gbps is much
greater than the competing offerings. The 9500V series also supports virtual
storage ports (VSPs) and host storage domains (HSDs), which promise to bring
virtualization features from the high-end lightning to the midrange/distributed
environment. This would raise the competitive bar significantly.