Hitachi Vantara launches new virtual storage platform for midsize enterprises

Hitachi Vantara, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, said it expects its mid-range models to experience double-digit growth in ASEAN, as it launched a new storage platform for midsize enterprise customers.

The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) E990, with its industry-leading 4:1 data deduplication, which is twice that of HItachi's closest competitor, is guaranteed to to free up 75 per cent of storage capacity.

The company also unveiled EverFlex, which provides flexible acquisition choices including consumption-based pricing models that range from basic utility pricing, to custom outcome-based services, to Storage as a Service.

While Hitachi Vantara did not disclose specific pricing details, this offering is "highly price competitive against comparable arrays from other vendors in the space" said the company.

This will be particularly alluring for customers in countries like the Philippines or Malaysia who may face and uphill battle in increasing their IT budget, said Joe Ong, vice president and general manager, ASEAN at Hitachi Vantara. He added that many companies are now using "whatever budget they have to buy a product and sustain their business operations".

With the new scheme, "we can put a box in your premise and we will charge based on your consumption. So we're moving capex cost from the customer to us," he said.

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The company added that Everflex allows companies to align technology spending with business use to reduce costs by up to 20 per cent, and eliminates the need to pay for the essential reserve capacity that every installation needs.

According to industry analyst firm 451 Research, now a part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, data volumes are forecast to rise to 23 per cent even as data storage budgets grow only 10 per cent on average. The firm also found that 43 per cent of storage buyers feel unprepared to support increased future demands.

KC Phua, Hitachi Vantara Core Storage & Data Protection Lead, Asia Pacific, added that the flexible pricing scheme is also opening new segments of customers to Hitachi.

"We are finding that the flexible pricing arrangement is attracting mid-size customers to Hitachi Vantara that have never spoken to us before."

Mr Phua added that further afield, markets like China pose a big opportunity.

"We're seeing now, minus the Covid-19 situation, a lot of technology refresh (in China). They refresh for a variety of reasons - they need a lot more storage because there's a lot more data consumption and they're hungry for performance,"he said.

Meanwhile, the Hitachi Ops Centre's artificial intelligence-driven management software will dramatically simplify storage provisioning for AI, machine learning, and containerised applications.

This streamlines storage delivery by up to 90 per cent for demanding applications and also reduces manual storage provisioning tasks by up to 70 per cent and delivers root cause issue analysis four times faster to accelerate troubleshooting. And given that the Ops Centre automates a huge portion of manual tasks, there are manpower savings, said Hitachi Vantara.