Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), has announced a new set of technologies in the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) portfolio that are designed to address the top demands businesses are placing on their IT organizations: a need for extended workforce mobility, and increased productivity from anywhere, anytime and from any device.
As large enterprises transition from traditional IT to private clouds, and from pure on-premises IT to a hybrid cloud – the HCP portfolio also offers the ability to tier data to a public cloud without sacrificing visibility or control of data. This new portfolio consists of HCP, Hitachi Content Platform Anywhere (HCP Anywhere), and Hitachi Data Ingestor (HDI).
The new release of HCP introduces adaptive cloud tiering, a feature that allows organizations to intelligently and automatically move data to and from a choice of leading public clouds from Google, Amazon and Microsoft based on changes in demand and policies set by the organization. This capability lets IT create a secure hybrid cloud that has the keys to true cloud mobility, complete with a balanced approach to security and cost. It does so by controlling what data is kept in-house and what is stored in the public cloud. With the added elements of HCP Anywhere and HDI, all user-oriented file services can be delivered in the most user-friendly way possible to balance the security and governance requirements of IT. In addition, new capabilities synchronize data across multiple active sites for improved productivity, faster access, and streamlined business continuity.
“At Oper8, technology is used to solve business problems and gain competitive advantage,” said Mark Owen, chief operating officer, Oper8 Pty Ltd (Australia). “Having constant, on-the-go access to important data is critical to making our business run fast and more efficiently, while extending the capability through our HCP-powered cloud storage solutions to the Asia Pacific marketplace. By making it easy for our clients to transition to the cloud, we can enable seamless access to data across any device, at any time and any place to support important business decisions.”
The updated HCP portfolio specifically helps to balance the needs of IT and the business. Its benefits include quicker, more reliable access to data, increased workforce productivity, simplified file serving for remote and branch offices, and content mobility to, from and among public and private clouds. Important upgrades and benefits include:
Agility: By mobilizing content across all IP-enabled devices including smart phones and tablets, it helps employees be even more productive. By enabling automated content migration across private and public clouds, HCP helps balance capex and opex spending, and allows on-demand capacity expansion.
Security: By maintaining a robust inventory of data, movement and access is centrally controlled and orchestrated across public, private and hybrid clouds while keeping secure access from multiple devices without compromising security policies in the data center.
Cost Optimization: While providing many new features, the solution remains affordable because it uses cloud topologies, virtual solutions, operational automation, enhanced content distribution, remote system configuration, and affordable public cloud services.
Flexibility and Scalability: Hitachi Cloud Transition Services and Hitachi Cloud Services for Content Archiving enable a broad range of deployment and cloud on-ramp capabilities, allowing customers to take full advantage of the flexibility and scalability of HCP. IT gains the ability to tier/archive content to the cloud whether it’s through the Hitachi Cloud Solution Packages or other partner cloud architectures – all based on specific customer business requirements.
“This new launch from Hitachi Data Systems strengthens our partner relationship and our enthusiasm that HDS will help us deliver the most enterprise-minded mobility solutions for our customers,” said Jeff Dobbelaere, vice president, Mainline Information Systems.
“As priorities and budgets shift in the enterprise, the need for taking a business-defined approach to IT decisions is quickly becoming the norm,” said Terri McClure, Sr. Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “When coupled with the unique challenges of an increasingly mobile workforce, it is more and more incumbent on IT departments to find technologies that support the realities of business today – from an ever more distributed employee base to an ‘always-on’ expectation when it comes to critical data. Today, technologies must support business – and not the other way around.”
“For today’s IT organization, it’s critical to deliver technology strategies and solutions in tight alignment with business priorities. We recognize that at HDS, and it’s something we call Business-Defined IT,” said Brian Householder, chief operating officer, Hitachi Data Systems. “Today’s increasingly disparate and mobile workforces require trusted data mobility from the data center to the cloud, across a diverse array of devices, machines, sensors and other IP-enabled data sources. Hitachi Content Platform is the most tightly integrated, seamless and secure data mobility offering available today.”
