Inrange, Hitachi Data Systems team to provide storage over IP solutions

Issued by Cogent Communications for Shoden Data Systems
Johannesburg, 25 Sep 2002

Hitachi Data Systems and Inrange Technologies Corporation have announced the successful completion of qualification testing between the Inrange IN-VSN 9801 Channel Extender and Hitachi TrueCopy, software for remote replication of mission-critical information for Fibre Channel over Internet Protocol (IP) environments.

"Customers can now benefit from a highly available IP storage solution offering high performance, cost-effective, secure long-distance data transmission," comments Fanie van Rensburg, MD of local HDS and Inrange distributor, Shoden Data Systems.

"In order to meet user requirements for 24x7 global data access, storage networks are increasingly spanning metro and wide area networks (WAN). As a result, IT administrators are looking for ways to leverage existing IP networks, and to remove or minimise distance limitations between geographically dispersed sites. Together, Inrange and Hitachi Data Systems enable customers in heterogeneous IT environments to extend their mission-critical information using Fibre Channel over IP storage network infrastructure, ensuring the safety, integrity and availability of that data across multiple systems."

In combination with Hitachi TrueCopy and Hitachi Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 V series systems, the INRANGE 9801, which supports disk mirroring, allows the secure transmission of data to remote locations at distances of thousands of kilometres using Fibre Channel over IP. This fully qualified solution enables IT administrators to manage rapidly growing storage resources while offering seamless data replication for business continuity applications. The 9801 can support TrueCopy in both synchronous and asynchronous modes with T3, OC-3 and 10/100 IP network connectivity interfaces.

"The ability to manage, move and protect mission-critical enterprise data continues to be a key customer requirement as organisations look to centralise resources, interconnect data centres, and push out information enabling instantaneous information access," adds Van Rensburg. "This partnership provides value and offers customers a wide variety of choices for implementing networked storage while leveraging lower-cost IP solutions."

Shoden Data Systems

With offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town, Shoden Data Systems (Pty) Ltd is the sole distributor for Hitachi Data Systems in SA. In addition, Shoden Data Systems is the sole distributor of INRANGE Technologies Corporation, the world's leading manufacturer of Channel Extenders, Fibre Channel and ESCON/FICON directors. Shoden Data Systems is also a Veritas Premier Partner and provides integrated, managed, best-of-breed storage area network solutions to the marketplace.

Based on more than 200 collective years of experience in the service, support and marketing of Hitachi products, Shoden Data Systems uses its intellectual capital and industry leading products to provide customers with total solutions in the storage, enterprise servers and connectivity arenas. The following offerings are available:

Storage - the HDS Freedom storage range, including Lightning 9900 and 9200.

Connectivity - the Inrange FC/9000 Fibre Channel/ FICON Director, ESCON Directors and Channel Extenders.

Hitachi Data Systems

Hitachi Data Systems, the fastest growing enterprise storage provider, is a leading supplier of storage hardware, software, solutions and services. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd (NYSE: HIT), Japan's largest electronics company, Hitachi Data Systems 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% of Fortune 100 companies. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.hds.com.

Hitachi, Ltd

Hitachi, Ltd, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 2001 (ended 31 March 2002) consolidated sales of 7 993.7 billion yen ($60.1 billion*). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd, please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://global.hitachi.com.

*At an exchange rate of 133 yen to the dollar.

INRANGE

Inrange Technologies Corporation (Nasdaq: INRG), a subsidiary of SPX Corporation, is the world leader in high-end scalable storage networking solutions and provides users with the building blocks to manage and expand large, complex storage networks simply, without geographic limitations. INRANGE's core-to-edge-to-anywhere solutions solve the growing storage challenges facing today's IT organisations, while providing investment protection and a proven foundation for future growth. INRANGE has a 33-year history of providing mission-critical networking technologies, servicing over 2 200 customers in 90 countries. For more information, visit the INRANGE Web site at www.inrange.com or call 1-800-222-0187.

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Inrange, Hitachi Data Systems team to provide storage over IP solutions

Combination of Hitachi TrueCopy Software and INRANGE Storage Networking Technology enables customers to leverage existing IP networks for business continuity and to interconnect SANs