HDS APAC Dialogues

Switch IT On Again

Phil Gann — 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In April, we launched a world-wide program called Switch IT On. Essentially, it was Hitachi Data Systems’ attempt to help our customers to jump on the virtualization bandwagon minus the associated costs; we wanted them to make use of the free software licenses to enjoy all the benefits of virtualization at a time where business efficiency and agility matters. And judging by the response, many of our customers did. In fact, the Switch IT On program has been so successful that we are launching the second phase of the program.

Switch IT On Phase II is essentially an extension of the former. It now includes Universal Storage Platform VM, which is our rack-mounted, modular version of the USP V storage virtualization controller. As part of the program, customers will receive free software licenses to virtualize any storage attached to USP VM. That means you experience all the advantages of virtualization—pooling heterogeneous storage devices, better management, improved utilization and increases return on assets and return on investment—without having to pay for them.

But this offer goes beyond just free licenses. It provides a slew of additional benefits, including basic operating system V software for virtualizing heterogeneous software; first 10 TB Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning software for maximum software utilization; Tiered Storage Manager software for dynamic data mobility; and in-system Replication software for better data protection.

Customers who are buying the new Hitachi NAS 3080 or 3090—our new mid-market NAS offering that is now gaining strong traction—have an additional benefit. They will receive intelligent file tiering software license for free as well.

Too good to be true? Actually it is not. In fact, the new and the former phases make perfect economic sense. After all, as leaders in the enterprise storage space, we have long understood the benefits of virtualization. Our aim with these programs is to help you and your business understand the real benefits that lie behind virtualization without having you to pay for it. It then provides a powerful argument for further investment to the Board, especially in today’s lean and cost-conscious times.

The new program also provides another powerful benefit; it preps your organization for future demand during a market upturn. As the market turns a corner, increased scrutiny by regulators and specific demands from customers will be key features. Those who are able to meet both will be well-poised for business success. Virtualization provides a key ingredient for this success—and it is a technology that we want our customers to realize today.

Both phases of the program are now available till 31 March 2010. You can find more details of the phase I and II here.

Are you ready for cloud?

Sunil Chavan — 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It seems everyone has a cloud computing strategy nowadays. For the moment, there seems to be a huge emphasis on cloud computing as a one-size fits all strategy that will solve a lot of today’s problems. Nothing can be further from the truth.

First and foremost, cloud computing—at least for Hitachi Data Systems—is not another product strategy for all needs. Essentially it offers an alternative delivery mechanism that allows your business to react to market demands quickly, improve cost-efficiency, and maximize your resource utilization. This is especially vital in Asia Pacific, where market demands and cost of doing business can vary considerably from country to country. With local populations demanding more specific services, cloud computing also provides an avenue for service providers to ramp up their service offerings or fashion unique ones to meet unique market demands quickly.

But the caveat is that you need the right experience and the product depth to enable it. Without the right experience in building a comprehensive cloud computing strategy for your business, it can result in business inefficiency and can even affect your bottom line and ability to meet service levels.

That’s the promise of the Hitachi Agile Cloud Solutions, and is the reason why we believe now is the best time to launch it. Instead of asking you to take a leap of faith, the new solutions provide customers a more rational and step-by-step approach to cloud computing that is based on actual needs. When those needs grow, you have the ability to ramp up your service quality and availability.

This is further backed by Hitachi’s wealth of experience in reliability, availability, and adaptability. Now with the flexibility of agile cloud solutions, you have the capability to change your game or services that is directly aligned with market needs and your core business strategy.

We can achieve this because the Hitachi Agile Cloud Solutions is designed with customer needs in mind. We practically listened to what customers really need, and stayed away from jumping onto the cloud computing bandwagon for sometime.

Just like what Mark Pratley, general manager of Managed ICT Products at Telstra, commented: “At Telstra we realized that becoming an aggregator of storage volumes aka a cloud enabler we would need to handle high capacities and at the same time ensure customers performance in order support the value proposition of "in the network" technology. Hitachi Data Systems has provided flexible and scalable storage solutions as part of our overall "cloud computing" service offering.”

Look out for the detailed announcement for Hitachi Agile Cloud Solutions.

Take the ‘Dummies’ route to Storage Virtualization

Phil Gann — 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Without question, the most talked about technology in today’s storage frontier is virtualization. Once a feature in mainframe systems, it is now seen as the solution for the numerous headaches that plaque today’s storage infrastructure—rising complexity, towering storage costs, low Return on Assets, storage management headaches and increasing number of storage silos.

Storage virtualization’s promise to resolve all these problems is now more urgent than ever. With market volatility, increasing competition and more calls for better regulations, it is vital for a company’s storage infrastructure to be both robust and flexible to meet market demands or maximize new business opportunities. It’s capability to provide this has been the reason why many vendors have been trumpeting claims about their storage virtualization features.

Although storage virtualization technology can indeed resolve many of today’s storage problems, it needs to be deployed properly. When paired with others like Dynamic Provisioning, it can help companies achieve 20-30% savings per year, 40% improvement in utilization, and up to 65% reclamation of storage capacity.

So where do you start, and what are the steps you need to take to ensure you maximize the benefits of virtualization? These are the questions the newly released Hitachi Data Systems’ edition of Storage Virtualization For Dummies aims to answer.

The book is co-authored by Adrian De Luca, Director, for presales & solutions, Australia & New Zealand and Mandar Bhide, Technical Director of Storage Management and Tiered Storage Solutions, Asia Pacific. Together, they bring over 30 years of combined expertise and experience to the book, in the fields of storage management, storage virtualization and data protection. The foreword is written by Hubert Yoshida, CTO and VP, Hitachi Data Systems.

Storage Virtualization For Dummies dispels popular misconceptions about storage virtualization, and provides a realistic guide on what this technology can really offer your business. For IT professionals, it provides a concise guideline for identifying, developing and implementing storage virtualization that allows businesses to maximize storage utilization, simplify management and drastically reduce operating costs.

Written in the casual Dummies series style, the new book is more than a primer and offers valuable insights for both business and IT professionals. Besides explaining the key benefits of virtualization, it provides a sound grounding in the key requirements for storage virtualization using intuitive visuals and real-life case studies.

Storage Virtualization For Dummies is not available for retail. To start your virtualization journey or to learn more about what virtualization really is about, get a copy through Hitachi Data Systems.

Time to reclaim your high ROA

Phil Gann — 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Return on Assets (ROA) is not a new term. It often is an important measure employed by financial analysts and CFOs to determine how profitable a company is relative to its total assets.

One reason why ROA has often been overlooked in IT is its low value—particularly when it comes to storage. Often the reasons for this low number are the low resource utilization of IT investments and the high amount used to employ management professionals to manage an increasingly complex storage environment.

With global realization in the importance of efficiency and better investment, ROA has become part of the corporate speak. This is especially the case for IT, where each new investment is now scrutinized for their business value. That means improving the utilization of your current resources may bode well for IT leaders and CIOs looking to justify their spending.

One of the surest ways to improve your ROA is to find ways to reclaim your storage. Storage traditionally has a low ROA because of the way it has been deployed. Often built in silos, IT often does not have a clear idea about the space they have, where they have more unused space and how to reallocate them to application and systems that require them more urgently.

That’s the reason for the new Hitachi Storage Reclamation Service. In essence, it gives back control of your IT storage resources and improves their utilization. It uses our vast experience in helping customers take advantage of dynamic provisioning technologies to increase utilization, reduce the cost of storage growth and extend the life of invested storage assets.

The service offering is end-to-end, provides quick analysis of the type of benefits customers can expect, and uses a shared risk to ensure that they only pay when our assessments exceed their pre-set expectations. Most importantly, it provides IT the means to improve their ROA in measurable ways that business leaders and the Board can readily understand and appreciate.

So which businesses are leading in improving their storage ROA? Look out for the nominations of the Best Return-on-Assets Strategy award category at the IT Inspiration Awards. It is a new category that we believe will unearth interesting results and showcase leading businesses that have made the best use of storage. It’s a formula that I am sure many of us will like to know.

What factors affect your ROA? How do you think APAC organizations will benefit from reclamation services discussed above. Tell us.

Green is the new color of business

Phil Gann — 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Mention “green” and people often think about investing in environmental protection initiatives. However, reducing carbon footprint and safeguarding the environment is only one dimension of green technology. Another factor that resonates well in today’s market situation is that it can help you save money through improved efficiency and productivity.

The idea behind the “green” revolution is to reduce wastage and finding more efficient and intelligent ways to do business. Technologies like virtualization and dynamic provisioning not only improve the way data is stored and managed, but also ensure your storage is fully utilized. With power costs rising exponentially adopting ‘green’ solutions that are power-efficient and require less power to cool also make sense—especially for those who are always encumbered with towering electricity bills for their data centers.

Another benefit that is often overlooked is improved business agility. Often, having lean and efficient operations means better time to market and reduces the time to maximize market opportunities. This is especially vital today as businesses scramble to hone their competitive edge and position themselves optimally as the market starts to recover.

So where and how to begin? Hitachi Data Systems has recently opened the Yokohama Third Center, which provides the example for “where”—especially for those who do not want to build a “green” data center on their own.

Robust and reliable as a Tier IV (highest level of availability) data center, the new 10,000-sqm facility with a power-efficiency of 1.6 PUE offers customers a full range of flexible operations management services, including storage management with a centrally managed and prompt troubleshooting service to help businesses align their operations and management of information systems in a way that lowers the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), streamlines operations and contributes to the overall business strategy. Equipped with the latest storage technologies ranging from Hitachi Storage Virtualization to Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning, the green data center is well poised to cater to the ever-changing corporate needs. In short, it is a data center designed to make perfect business sense.

The “how” is best answered by learning from the success of other businesses who have gone “green”. Understanding the experiences of the nominees of the Best Green Strategy for a Data Center category in this year’s IT Inspiration Awards is an ideal place to begin.

What are your business concerns for going green? Share your experiences and insights with us.

Protect your Virtual machines for Disaster Recovery

Michael Heffernan — 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

To a large extent, the current trend in the storage industry towards a virtualized data center is being brought about by VMware. This revelation became quite clear owing to my recent experience of attending VMworld 2009 in San Francisco. The event proved that nearly all IT environments are moving into virtualization.

The attendance was close to 15,000 of IT professionals across all sectors that have some form of relationship with the company. This in itself more than tripled from my previous attendance back in 2005. For those of you not familiar with VMworld, it is a large conference specifically focused around VMware products & solutions that provides an environment and community of information for lab sessions, solution exchange sessions and a place to network to obtain user experience. What was most evident over the event was just how many large corporations have embraced the technology within their production environments and how the whole Virtual Center management software layer has matured and has a lot more integration into 3rd party vendor products.

Virtualization is proving many benefits for cost savings, management and overall scalability which are impressive. However, it also brings a whole new element for both design and disaster recovery.

Migration from physical server hardware into a virtual machine changes the entire concept of complete backup and recovery in the traditional way. In the area of VMware, virtual machines (VM’s) are now data files sitting on a VMFS clustered file system which in turn sits on storage, this being either a storage pool (Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning) or LDEV (LUN). What this means is that now there is another layer of complexity within the underlying infrastructure and hence a different approach for backup and recovery.

Consolidating multiple virtual machines onto the same LUN adds a higher risk to the environment – for example a VMFS volume may contain many VM’s. If there is an issue with this volume – lost connectivity from the VMware Host or storage – then all these VM’s will be affected at the same time, creating a major impact. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to provide a solution to be able to protect these in order to have the fastest and most consistent recovery.

Based on my experience, I recommend multiple forms of protection simultaneously in a VMware enviroment:
1) VMFS partition protection
2) Host operating system and application protection
3) Virtual machine protection

I will focus on item 1 for this blog and this is what we demonstrated at VMworld 2009 for our Hitachi Data Systems replication solution for VMware Site Recovery Manager:

VMFS partitions can be extremely large in size hence require a block based replication at the storage subsystem in order to achieve that level of RTO required by the business. VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) manages the failover from a production data center site to a disaster recovery site as well as failover between two sites with active workloads.

Hitachi Data Systems has developed a Storage Replication Adapter to integrate into the VMware SRM which then allows the control of HDS’ True Copy Synchronous/Extended Distance or Universal Replicator software. What this now provides is duplicate copies of data at a remote site for failover testing and recovery. This integrated solution has a centralized management from the VMware SRM for the system administrator to manage the storage replication. That’s what I call “Simplification” and “Ease of Management”.

Stay tuned for future blogs for the other ways to protect your VMware environment using HDS solutions.

Visit us here to learn more about these solutions for VMware.

Pushing the midrange NAS envelope

Sunil Chavan — 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In today’s information-centric era where having the right information at the right place can reap rich dividends, having disparate information silos do not make any sense. Managing them in isolation can not only increase management costs, but also render the business inflexible to new market developments and opportunities. This means that total cost of ownership (TCO) goes up, opportunity costs goes up and competitiveness goes down. At the same time, operational efficiency takes a hit as storage utilization is not optimized. In a time where market volatility remains the order of the day, inflexible and cost-inefficient information storage infrastructure can actually hurt the bottom line.

The answer for many CIO’s and businesses lies in Network Attached Storage (NAS). It provides a means to build a file sharing network across many locations. However, for most mid-sized business, traditional NAS architectures pose three main problems: complex management; the inability to properly manage increasingly important unstructured data such as email, image files of documents, etc.; and poor scalability and performance; and most important of all, high costs.

These are the reasons why today’s new announcement of Hitachi NAS 3080 and 3090 are creating a wave of excitement across different industries. Besides offering up to 2 petabytes of capacity and the 100K IOPS per node, the two newest offerings also employ the industry’s first integrated native file tiering capability. Called Intelligent File Tiering, it is tightly integrated with the Hitachi Data Discovery Suite and enables you to move data automatically between high cost and low cost storage media to simplify management and balance performance with storage utilization, and search the content across information silos and use the search results to trigger data movement.

The two new offerings are also designed for handling unstructured data—a key data type that is becoming increasing ubiquitous in today’s business. This provides an ideal answer for many industries where unstructured data is considered as critical business data. Take for example, healthcare. Here, patient information is often stored as records and images, which are unstructured data. Having a NAS solution that is designed to store and manage such data will ease data management headaches.

The new offerings are also priced for mid-sized businesses, who often suffer budget constraints. The new Hitachi NAS 3080 and 3090 offer enterprise performance and scalability at a midrange price. The “pay-as-you-grow” model offers flexibility and simplified management of storage resources. That means you can leverage enterprise functionality without the traditional complexity or the enterprise price tag. Plus, you only pay when your needs or demands grow.

Essentially, the new offerings rebalance the TCO and reshape the market landscape for NAS—especially for mid-sized businesses. In fact, studies have already shown that customers can achieve up to 30 percent TCO savings over competitive offerings available today, which is significant.

Visit us at www.hds.com to learn more about these new NAS offerings.

Are your records compliant?

Sunil Chavan — 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is a question that most ignore at their own peril. Simply put, storing documents safely is not enough if they need to hold up in courts. Instead, documents need to be stored in a manner that is compliant with the wide range of laws and legislations surrounding record keeping.

That’s why courts and regulators do not just want the documents; they also want to know about access rights and privileges, security features, auditing functionality, content protection mechanisms, de-duplication processes, search and retrieval capabilities and so on. Printing a hard copy or displaying it on screen is not going to appease the legal fraternity.

At the same time, laws and regulations are also getting tougher. Countries around the region have introduced a range of laws to ensure proper record keeping in both physical and electronic domains. Terrorism, tax evasion and money laundering fears have also seen the entry of new privacy and security laws that have grave consequences for non-compliance.

These are the reasons why many are considering solutions like Hitachi Content Archive Platform (HCAP) that go beyond traditional structured storage.

As an object-based system, HCAP stores only one copy of an original document. All changes and amendments are tracked closely, and require digital fingerprints. This not only reduces the retrieval time and improve security, but also ensures that the record is being stored and retrieved properly as and when required.

HCAP has another advantage—it is content aware. This makes it stand out from other Content Addressable Storage (CAS) solutions in the market place. It assures businesses that only users with the right authorization can search and retrieve records against full file attributes, including content and meta data. By doing so, it eliminates cases of tampering that can compromise a record’s legal standing.

Whether your business is looking to deploy such systems or have one, it is increasingly clear that record keeping is a mission-critical business process for any business. The cost of non-compliance is also rising, and can dent your reputation, hinder growth, and unhinge business success. Having a solution like HCAP can ensure that your records are always stored and retrieved effectively and efficiently. Most importantly, it ensures that your records are compliant.

One week of User Conferences

Phil Gann — 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This past week has been a busy one for the Hitachi Data Systems APAC team with our annual User Conferences being held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Tuesday and Bangkok, Thailand, on Thursday followed by the industry Technology Senate event for Indian CIO’s in Phuket, Thailand, which commenced on Thursday evening and culminated in an awards ceremony on Saturday night representing a significant investment in time for these very busy IT execs.

Naturally the focus in all events is on strategies to save money or defer spending wherever possible and this message was consistently delivered in presentations from Hu Yoshida, the Global VP and CTO for Hitachi Data Systems, along with customer presentations from Alex Siow, Senior Vice President (Head, Information Services and Program Office, Starhub), and Prayoot Tansrisuwan, CEO, IT One Co., Ltd. in Bangkok, who were amongst many speakers that provided their companies experiences. The focus this year is on Return on Assets (ROA) and how to reclaim Storage Capacity that already exists but is not easily accessible. In a downturn or flat economy where budgets are limited at best, being able to unlock resources that have already been paid for is a bonus for many IT managers.

Attendance at the HDS User Conferences has set new records in every location so far this year and the KL and Bangkok events were no exception. Over 400 people joined the conference in KL and in excess of 500 people attended the Bangkok event. Given the tough economic times this level of increased attendance shows the importance of understanding what is available today in terms of technology for storing and managing the storage of data and to see how other large organizations are addressing the problems that most companies are facing.

An area we are witnessing increased interest is for Services that can be provided by vendors such as Hitachi Data Systems that assist with these requirements. Clearly companies are looking at strategic ways to manage their own resources including personnel more efficiently and having specialist tasks handled by a service provider along with the very mundane repetitive tasks that are essential but consume considerable time. The interest in our Storage Reclamation Service and Managed Reporting Services is greater than ever.

Of course Cloud Computing is a hot topic but there is still considerable interest in Virtualization and Green IT and how the technology developed for these can be used not only now but also how it forms part of a Cloud strategy for an organization going forward. This along with Content Management and handling those vast amounts of data that are growing exponentially are definitely getting the lion’s share of attention.

So as I sit in Bangkok airport having spent the week listening to many presentations and talking to customers, prospective customers and partners, I realized the power of hype and marketing in steering the discussions to a specific topic such as Cloud Computing. Now I thought I would pose the following question for readers of this blog: Do you find the information shared in these Vendor and Industry events valuable to your business and more importantly what do you think would make these conferences more relevant and beneficial to your company for the time you invest in attending?

Inspirational Ideas

Phil Gann — 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In my role I meet with many customers and I’m continually amazed at the innovative ways they use our products and solutions. Many of these ideas form the basis for future products and solutions we bring to market. It is this continuous innovation we see in the field that inspired us to initiate the Hitachi Data Systems IT Inspiration Awards.

Launched in 2008, the awards recognize the talent of IT leaders, both corporations and individuals, who we and the IT community believe are the perfect role models to inspire a new generation of thinking, infrastructure building and success through innovative storage management.

At Hitachi Data Systems, we firmly believe that innovation and inspiration are the ‘x’ factors that give an organization its competitive edge. Innovation leads to further success and we wanted to showcase the success stories of those customers, who have gone beyond traditional measures to address key technology issues that are shaping the market today and providing the direction for tomorrow. The awards provide a perfect platform to share best practices that contribute to the growth of the industry and set new benchmarks of excellence.

The Hitachi Data Systems IT Inspiration Awards 2009 has 6 categories: 4 for the industry and 2 for personal achievement—all play a key role in the current business and economic environment. The first category is the Best Green Strategy for a Data Center that highlights the ever-increasing importance of a sustainable business and environmental protection strategy in decision-making. It rewards corporations that have taken a ‘green’ route to data center management.

The second category is the Most Innovative Use of Technology. This is where innovation in changing the way a company does business or create new services is celebrated. This award will recognize the most innovative use of storage solution in the region that makes a difference to the company's business.

The third category, the Best Return-on-Assets Strategy, takes an in-depth look at how companies are leveraging technology to improve their return on assets (ROA). It tackles traditional thinking of storage management that often results in low ROA and showcases winners who have done more with less.

The fourth category taps on one of the hottest trends in the industry—virtualization. The Best Virtualization Strategy celebrates corporations who have successfully implemented virtualization in Asia Pacific—either in storage or servers – to transform their business.

The last two categories highlight personal achievements. The CIO of the Year award—whose role is getting ever more important and strategic—goes to each senior IT decision maker in a country or region, whose achievements have made him or her stand apart from the rest. The coveted CIO of CIO’s then goes to the one among these awardees whose thought leadership and contribution in improving his or her corporation’s standing through innovation and strategic IT investments have been exceptional.

This year, as many corporations struggle to survive and succeed in the tough economic climate, the awards will assume more importance than ever. I am sure to see gems of inspiration in a diverse range of successful storage deployments that is bound to be followed closely by the global IT community and inspire them.

Now you can contribute to shaping the industry standard and setting new milestones by voting for the best in the region. Your vote will help in bringing fresh insights in the next generation of inspirational technology. Go ahead and vote for the nominees now.

Let the conversation begin…

Phil Gann — 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to APAC Dialogues – the first Asia Pacific blog of Hitachi Data Systems. This blog will be hosted by a number of the key team members from the Asia Pacific Solutions and Products Group (SPG) of Hitachi Data Systems. The APAC SPG is an organization comprising a group of solution champions that provide technical support for our products, solutions and services, along with consultancy to drive business and technical strategy for Hitachi Data Systems’ solutions across the region.

So why start a blog now? Firstly, as web communication is becoming a more common place and as its use as an information tool grows in business, it is only natural that we use this medium of communication with those interested in storage solutions. Additionally, we believe that having an Asia Pacific perspective is important and compliments the widely read blog from our corporate CTO Office. This blog aims to provide you the right platform to air your concerns, discuss key innovations, learn from each other and help to maximize the value you invest in Storage Technology within your business.

At Hitachi Data Systems, we are proud of our strong heritage, which is rooted in mainframe and with decades of innovation in helping our customers control data growth through technology development. More recently we have brought concepts such as virtualization and dynamic provisioning into the IT vocabulary and made these technologies readily available to our customers. We feel that this blog can contribute to the knowledge sharing.

As many of you are busy building on your core business strengths and taking any competitive leverage or market opportunity available, we believe that our innovation and inspiration can offer you the benefits and advantages you need. This is especially important in today’s market climate where volatility and unpredictability have made many scrutinize every dollar spent and relentlessly focus on lowering total cost of ownership and realize a maximum return on investment of IT assets.

With this blog, we are looking to take this conversation into the vast social networking world. We are looking to discuss key technologies and market insights that can broaden your business horizons, while offering new insights into the initiatives that we continue to roll out both globally and specifically to the Asia Pacific region.

In the weeks to come, you will read about the role that awards such as the Hitachi Data Systems IT Inspiration Awards provide in reshaping the IT landscape. We will open discussion on the thought-provoking changing role of CIOs in Asia Pacific and what are the key issues that make the job of the CIO ever more challenging. And if you have missed out attending our key regional events, don’t despair. You can now catch those highlights and experience the event virtually, along with our thoughts and comments

However, as with any form of social networking we do not believe in having a one-way conversation. We believe we have a lot to learn from you and we look forward to your comments, ideas and suggestions. This two-way conversation can help us understand your concerns and build solutions that really matter to you and your business. After all, our success is essentially tied to yours.

So let the conversation begin…