Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., (TSE: 6501), today announced that it has shipped more storage capacity into mainframe environments than any other supplier during the first 9 months of 2012, according to IDC's WW Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, 3Q2012. The top ranking complements the company’s new mainframe support for Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage, designed for the most demanding enterprise workloads and extended endurance. HDS will showcase its new enterprise-class, solid state storage options, and its industry-leading virtualization and tiered storage capabilities for mainframe customers in Booth 303 at SHARE 2013, February 3-8, at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square Hotel in San Francisco, Calif. With these capabilities and the Hitachi Data Systems framework for Storage Economics, attendees will learn how to analyze their costs to achieve maximum return on their mainframe storage investments.

“With an increasing number of enterprises seeing real performance benefits from introducing solid state drives into their storage environments, it makes perfect sense for these same enterprises to expand their use of solid state to their mainframe storage systems,” said Eric Sheppard, research director, IDC Storage. “Hitachi Accelerated Flash support for mainframe, combined with the company's well established presence in the mainframe storage market, puts HDS in an excellent position to help its customers make just such a move.”

According to Claus Mikkelsen, chief scientist, Hitachi Data Systems, “In today’s financial climate, customers need to understand where their costs and potential savings are more than ever, which is exactly what our Storage Economics framework helps them do. Using the HDS Storage Economics approach, major HDS customers have been able to optimize storage expenditures to achieve year-on-year cost reductions of 30% for 4 years, even while experiencing 40-60% annual growth. We expect these impressive savings will only be accelerated by greater adoption of Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage and our advanced tiering software.”

Now available for use with mainframe storage, the new Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage announced in November 2012, is the first enterprise-class, solid state storage option built from the ground up. Built with the unique Hitachi embedded flash controller and MLC flash memory, it delivers superior performance over single-level cell (SLC) devices, and lowers bit costs over multi-level cell (MLC) flash based SSDs.

Additional enhancements that Hitachi Data Systems will showcase for the mainframe market include Hitachi Dynamic Tiering for advanced internal and external virtualization. This multi-layered tiering strategy now supports up to three storage tiers and more flexible policy controls than other industry options.

Hitachi Data Systems also announced that Hitachi, Ltd. and International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation have successfully completed joint testing of both Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) FICON mainframe storage compatibility and integration testing of Hitachi Universal Replicator and IBM GDPS/PPRC HyperSwap® for advanced business continuity and disaster recovery deployments. These test results confirm that Hitachi Data Systems delivers the storage performance and availability, which is critical for the most demanding business continuity and disaster recovery scenarios, while making it easier for mainframe customers to install Hitachi Data Systems and IBM products in their IT environments.

SHARE 2013: Hitachi Data Systems Educates Attendees on Saving Storage Virtualization Costs

SHARE is the premier training and networking event for the mainframe industry dedicated to the development of enterprise IT professionals for the betterment of their organizations. Attendees of the Hitachi Data Systems booth (#303) will view presentations and engage with company representatives. HDS is a silver sponsor of the event and HDS executives will lead the following breakout sessions:

Session: “Tiered DISK Storage Panel with HDS, IBM, and EMC”
Panelist: William Smith, Americas product manager, HDS
Date / Time: Tuesday, February 5, 11:00 – 12:15 p.m. PST

Session: “Hitachi Dynamic Tiering - Storage Tiering for the Mainframe”
Presenter: William Smith, Americas product manager, Enterprise Storage, HDS
Date / Time: Tuesday, February 5, 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. PST

Session: “Hitachi VSP Update and Directions”
Presenter: William Smith, Americas product manager, Enterprise Storage, HDS
Date / Time: Wednesday, February 6, 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. PST

Session: “Lunch and Learn: IBM® System z® High Performance FICON® (zHPF) on Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform”
Presenter: Steve Rice, master performance consultant, Mainframe Storage, HDS
Date / Time: Thursday, February 7, 12:15 – 1:15 p.m. PST

Session: “The Dollars and SENSE of Mainframe Storage and Virtualization”
Presenter: Claus Mikkelsen, chief scientist, HDS
Date / Time: Thursday, February 7, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. PST

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About Hitachi Data Systems

Hitachi Data Systems provides best-in-class information technologies, services and solutions that deliver compelling customer ROI, unmatched return on assets (ROA) and demonstrable business impact. With a vision that IT must be virtualized, automated, cloud-ready and sustainable, Hitachi Data Systems offers solutions that improve IT costs and agility. With approximately 5,900 employees worldwide, Hitachi Data Systems does business in more than 100 countries and regions. Hitachi Data Systems products, services and solutions are trusted by the world’s leading enterprises, including more than 70 percent of the Fortune 100 and more than 80 percent of the Fortune Global 100. Hitachi Data Systems believes that data drives our world – and information is the new currency. To learn more, visit: http://www.hds.com.

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 320,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2011 (ended March 31, 2012) consolidated revenues totaled 9,665 billion yen ($117.8 billion). Hitachi is focusing more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes information and telecommunication systems, power systems, industrial, transportation and urban development systems, as well as the sophisticated materials and key devices that support them. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.

© Hitachi Data Systems Corporation 2013. All rights reserved. HITACHI is a trademark or registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. Innovate With Information is a trademark or registered trademark of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. IBM, HyperSwap, FICON, System z are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation., All other trademarks, service marks, and company names are properties of their respective owners.