Hitachi launches next-generation USP

Barcelona, 08 Sept 2004

In a global launch, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has announced its new universal storage platform (USP), TagmaStore, which the company says features technologies previously not available in enterprise storage systems.

According to HDS, the new USP will change industry dynamics of data storage, as it powers an embedded virtualisation layer capable of managing up to 32 petabytes of internal and external storage, logical partitions in both internal and external storage, and storage-agnostic remote copy that will simplify business continuity.

A survey conducted recently by the Storage Networking Industry Association shows that end-users ranked their storage 'pain points` in the following order:

. Cost price and total cost of ownership.
. Managing growth and meeting capacity needs.
. Inability to manage storage assets and infrastructure.
. Lack of integrated and/or interoperable solutions.
. Increasing complexity of storage infrastructure.
"It is for these reasons that we are aiming to achieve business continuity, storage area management and data lifecycle management," says John Taffinder, VP of HDS EMEA.

"With TagmaStore we want to bring IT and business closer by bringing together application, content, data and storage services with business operations."

Taffinder says the new USP has a third-generation parallel crossbar switch architecture as its engine, allowing it to deliver two million input output operations per second, "a 500% advantage over other storage systems on the market".

He says cached bandwidth is the limiting performance factor in any cache-centric high-end storage system, but the new architecture breaks through inherent bottlenecks in legacy architectures by offering 68GBps of cached bandwidth.

"The reasons we are launching TagmaStore include the fact that the value of data is increasing, as is the amount that needs to be stored, particularly since government regulations now require companies to retain critical data," says Trevor Williams, product marketing manager at HDS.

He says storage management and its costs are becoming a bigger challenge, and customers are constantly saying they need to do more with less budget.

"We aim to deliver the right storage system to the right architecture at the right time, on time," says Williams.

"With all the things HDS has been doing over the past few years, we believe we have achieved our goal of being the top player in the storage industry, and we expect the USP to take us to the next level."