Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

STANDARD INSURANCE COMPANY IMPLEMENTS HDS' HiCommand

Hitachi Data Systems, one of the world's fastest growing enterprise storage providers and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd, has announced that Standard Insurance Company ("The Standard"), a leading nationwide provider of insurance and retirement plans, has implemented Hitachi's HiCommand Device Manager, an integrated software package that automates and streamlines storage management tasks.

"Over 5 million individuals and groups across the United States rely on The Standard for their insurance and retirement services, so it's absolutely crucial that our storage systems function with the utmost degree of reliability," explained Ken Neubauer, Senior Infrastructure Architect, The Standard. "When we decided to simplify our management processes with storage management software, we chose to implement Hitachi Data Systems' HiCommand Device Manager. Over the past sixteen years we've worked closely with Hitachi Data Systems, and have built a great degree of confidence in their product integrity, due to the high levels of reliability and data protection we've experienced. We feel that Hitachi offers superior products in the marketplace."

Hitachi Data Systems set up a heterogeneous SAN to support The Standard's critical business information such as proprietary insurance applications, client data for over 5 million customers, claims, internal business functions and Web-based reporting application for end-users. The data and applications are delivered from a variety of sources, including a high-end UNIX server and over 2400 desktop PCs. In addition to the storage management benefits, The Standard has experienced an increase in performance from a low end of 100 times to a high end of 1000 times their previous storage performance from the implementation of a Hitachi Freedom Storage Lightning 9960.

An integrated storage system manager, HiCommand Device Manager enables customers to configure, monitor, and tune via a single graphical user interface (GUI) over an IP connection device, allowing central management of Hitachi Freedom Storage systems and third-party, multi-platform server hosts from a single screen. HiCommand Device Manager supports the Hitachi Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 V series as well as Hitachi Lightning 9900 and Thunder 9200 systems. In addition, HiCommand Device Manager manages SUN StorEdge 9900, 9900V and T3 arrays, making it the first device manager to fully support other vendor's products. HiCommand Device Manager is currently licensed in over 100 sites throughout the world.

"HiCommand has significantly lowered storage management costs for The Standard, while simultaneously improving efficiency and ease of use," said Curt Wittich, vice president, U.S. Sales and Service, Hitachi Data Systems. "By consolidating The Standard's stored data into one pool, HiCommand immediately enables them to manage a larger amount of storage capacity, and also paves the way for future growth."

Neubauer added, "We've built a very strong relationship with Hitachi Data Systems over the years because of the excellent service and support they've provided. We've been extremely pleased with the consistency of their account management, and their attention to our needs. Down the road, as our storage demands continue to grow, we know that they'll continue to serve us."

About Standard Insurance Company

Standard Insurance Company, a subsidiary of StanCorp Financial Group Inc (StanCorp), is a leading provider of employee benefits and services, with more than 32,000 group insurance policies inforce covering more than 5.6 million employees, as of June 30, 2002. For more information about The Standard, visit www.standard.com.

About Hitachi Data Systems

Hitachi Data Systems, one of the fastest growing enterprise storage providers, is a leading supplier of storage hardware, software, solutions and services. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd, Japan's largest electronics company, HDS is committed to providing the storage infrastructure for the world's most information-intensive corporations. With 2,600 employees, Hitachi Data Systems does business through direct sales and resellers in the public and private sectors in 170 countries on six continents. Its customers include more than 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For more information, please visit our Website at www.hds.com.

About Hitachi Ltd

Hitachi Ltd, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company, with approximately 320,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2001 (ended March 31, 2002) consolidated sales total 7,994 billion yen ($60.1 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors, including information systems, electronic devised, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's Website at global.hitachi.com.

Contact: Jodi Reinman, Hitachi Data Systems, 408-970-1050, e-mail: jodi.reinman@hds.com.