Hitachi to foray into mid-range storage space

Rahul Gupta

MUMBAI: Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), a global player in the enterprise storage segment, is planning to foray into the mid-range storage space. The company is also strengthening its channel base by appointing new channel chiefs and offering new schemes to the channel partners.

Patrick Lim, Vice-President and General Manager, South Asia, HDS said, "HDS has clearly proven itself in the high-end RAID market where we are currently almost tied with EMC for leadership. With the new Thunder 9500 V Series we intend to jump-start our mid-range storage revenue and pressurize some server vendors (such as IBM or Sun) to eventually resell our mid-range arrays."



With Thunder 9500 V Series in place, the company is trying to penetrate growing verticals that include retail, life sciences, health care, and rich media. The 9500V series also supports virtual storage ports and Host Storage Domains that brings virtualization features from the high-end lightning to the midrange environment.

The company is going to strengthen its channel structure also and in this regard has appointed a new channel manager for Asia South and is soon going to appoint Channel Director that would initialize new channel programs within three months.



The company currently has three channel partners in India that include Apara, Tata Infotech and Lanbit and with the launch of new programs it would have a multi-tiered scheme of 15 partners. With 15 customers including most of the leading names in the telecom, banking and software development space, the company currently has 70 percent of the enterprise segment in India. It is expecting to grow by 12 percent in FY2003 reaching $2.33 million from $2.07 million.