Features - Storage Innovations:

HITACHI ACCELERATES STORAGE AREA MGMT SOFTWARE CAPABILITIES

Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd, have announced the newest additions to its HiCommand suite and the further evolution of the company's storage software strategy. These additions include several new Hitachi-developed applications, co-branded versions of AppIQ's storage management products, and enhancements to existing HiCommand software modules.

Since introducing the Hitachi TrueNorth vision, Hitachi Data Systems has successfully delivered solutions that have reduced total cost of ownership and accelerated return on investment for customers through an open management framework, intelligent storage systems and a collaborative business model.

With the announcement, Hitachi Data Systems introduces the next stage of its software strategy with new applications designed to manage storage infrastructure and deliver services to core business applications, ensuring Quality-of-Service (QoS) for application availability, performance and business continuity. The newly announced applications simplify business processes for enterprises by providing:

• Management from application to the LUN
• Management of heterogeneous storage, SAN, server and application environments
• Simplification of complex operations through automation of storage processes using user-defined policies and automation templates.

"HDS' relationship with AppIQ makes good sense. There is a lot in common in their strategic thinking, and by dividing up development tasks, customers should see better quality and improved time-to-market from both vendors," said Tony Prigmore, senior analyst at Enterprise Storage Group.

"Unlike other storage-centric management tools, the expanded HiCommand Suite announced today provides application-centric, end-to-end mapping from the application to the disk drive, with centralized, integrated management of multiple heterogeneous hosts, SANs, applications and storage systems," said Jack Domme, vice president of storage management software at Hitachi Data Systems. "HiCommand takes a more comprehensive view of IT management and examines the entire environment, focusing on applications, business processes and procedures, with plans for expansion via correlation, workflow, information integration and knowledge management."

The enhanced HiCommand Suite is completely CIM/SMI-S enabled. Its component modules provide an application-centric GUI, a CIM/SMI-S architecture, APIs, and enhanced CLI, which make it the industry's leading standards-based storage management framework. This enables best-of-breed functionality to be easily integrated, enabling HDS to provide comprehensive, unified storage management solutions.

As part of the announcements, Hitachi Data Systems is introducing several new products-including co-branded versions of AppIQ's best-in-class software-as well as enhancements to existing HiCommand products.

New Hitachi Storage Area Management Software Products

• HiCommand Storage Services Manager -- A comprehensive, application-oriented platform for multi-vendor storage infrastructure management, architected entirely on SMI-S. This standards-based platform is a critical foundation for any storage management infrastructure, providing organizations with a single, common repository for discovering and tracking all storage resources.
• HiCommand Business Modules
• HiCommand Path Provisioning -- Enhances HiCommand Storage Manager's platform for multi-vendor storage management with a standards-based method of provisioning heterogeneous environments. HiCommand Path Provisioning provides organizations with a single interface for provisioning storage across their environment while utilizing a common policy manager and components that provide for current and future automation needs -- regardless of storage type.
• HiCommand Chargeback-A fully integrated charge-back software module that utilizes the rich database of HiCommand Storage Services Manager, enabling organizations to associate cost with usage.
• HiCommand Application Modules -- Leverage the HiCommand Storage Manager repository as a communications channel to provide timely application intelligence to storage functions, enabling organizations to match and optimise their data delivery (Quality-of-Service) requirements to specific applications including Oracle, (HiCommand QoS for Oracle), Exchange (HiCommand QoS for Exchange) and File Servers (HiCommand QoS for File Servers).
• HiCommand Policy Manager -- Based on Hitachi Ltd's industry-leading system management software, JP1, HiCommand Policy Manager reduces storage management overhead by automating policy and workflow processes. Policy Manager seamlessly integrates management of multiple, distributed platforms and applications. This sophisticated integration enables real-time automated management of storage resources, resulting in TCO/ROI improvements.
• HiCommand Provisioning Manager and HiCommand Protection Manager --Provisioning Manager optimizes the deployment of Hitachi storage systems by exploiting deep knowledge of the architectures and automating the workflow to improve administrator efficiency. Protection Manager simplifies management of data replication and movement for business continuity by automating the associated workflow.

Enhancements To HiCommand Software Modules

• HiCommand Device Manager -- Hitachi's integrated element manager is now SMI-S 1.0-enabled for further interoperability and features an enhanced graphical user interface (GUI) for ease-of-use. Integration of replication and data movement software (Hitachi ShadowImage in-system replication software, TrueCopy remote replication software, RapidXchange cross-OS file exchange, and Quick Shadow copy-on-write snapshot) with Device Manager advances its storage system management capabilities.
• HiCommand Tuning Manager -- A unique systems-based storage monitor that provides both utilisation (quantitative) and performance (qualitative) information, is enhanced with additional platform support (IBM AIX) and fabric awareness via the Brocade API.

About Hitachi Data Systems

Hitachi Data Systems leverages global R&D resources to develop storage solutions built on industry-leading technology with the performance, availability and scalability to maximize customers' ROI and minimize their risk. By focusing on the customer's perspective as we apply the best hardware, software, and services from Hitachi and our partners, we uniquely satisfy our customers' business needs.

With 2,700 employees, Hitachi Data Systems conducts business through direct and indirect channels in the public, government and private sectors in over 170 countries. Its customers include more than 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.hds.com/.

About Hitachi Ltd

Hitachi Ltd, headquartered in Tokyo, is a leading global electronics company, with approximately 340,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2002 (ended March 31) consolidated sales totaled 8,191.7 billion yen ($68.3 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors, including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's Web site at www.hitachi.com/.