Hitachi Vantara Unveils VSP E990 Storage Array, Adds Flexible Consumption Model

The VSP E990 brings the enterprise-class capabilities of the company's flagship VSP 5000 family in a package targeted at midsize enterprises,and gives customers a choice of purchase, lease or as-a-service consumption.

Hitachi Vantara Tuesday introduced a new storage system it said offers the full gamut of enterprise-class storage capabilities while being priced for the midsize enterprise market.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based storage vendor also expanded its partner program with EverFlex, a new program that gives customers multiple ways to consume Hitachi Vantara storage.

The new Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) E990 storage array is the fastest all-NVMe array for midsize enterprises, said Kimberly King, vice president of global channels and partners.

[Related: Hitachi Vantara To Use Waterline Acquisition For Intelligent Data Management]

"The E990 takes all the enterprise-class storage capabilities and guarantees and puts them into a new price point and configuration for midrange enterprises," King told CRN. "We feel the midrange enterprise is a market that is growing the quickest."

The VSP E990 fits in the Hitachi Vantara line between its high-end VSP 5000 family and VSP E900, and has all the enterprise capabilities of the VSP 5000, King said. "We're not making it cheap, but instead we're making it cost-effective," she said.

The VSP E990 delivers a new competitive advantage to Hitachi Vantara because it brings the technology of the VSP 5000 line to the midrange enterprise, said Joe Kadlec, vice president and senior partner at Consiliant Technologies, an Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider and Hitachi Vantara channel partner.

"If the price point is right, this is a big advantage for channel partners," Kadlec told CRN.

The new array could open new markets and help partners exploit existing markets, Kadlec said.

"A lot of prospects think of Hitachi as extremely high end," he said. "If the price is right, the E990 gives us a foot in the door. We've been asking for this. And now it's come to fruition. It's a good win for our customers and for us."

The VSP E990 features all-NVMe flash storage connectivity for up to 5.8 million IOs per second performance with latencies as low as 64 microseconds. It is server-class-memory-ready, and can be upgraded to NVMe Over Fabric (NVMe-oF),and scale to up to 16.6 petabytes. It comes with the Hitachi Flash Assurance Program, which guarantees 100 percent data availability.

The array comes bundled with Hitachi Ops Center, the company's management software that provides data protection, infrastructure automation, telemetry analytics and other management capabilities, King said.

Hitachi Vantara Tuesday also unveiled EverFlex, a new financing program for the company's storage technology.

EverFlex allows customers to acquire Hitachi Vantara storage however they feel is best, whether it is a purchase, a lease or as a service, King said.

"We'll also do financing for our partners," she said. "And we'll enable cloud service providers and managed service providers to deliver the storage on a consumption basis as a service. Partners can even do multiple consumption models at the same time."

EverFlex is available first with the VSP E990 and will roll out with other Hitachi Vantara arrays over the next few months, King said.

"We're trying to get really aggressive with partners and customers, which is important when customers don't have the ability to make big purchases or who otherwise need an as-a-service consumption model," she said.

EverFlex adds a layer of flexibility to Hitachi Vantara's storage technology, Kadlec said.

"A lot of customers are going to different consumption models," he said. "Having the technology as a service means customers can pay as they go. And the ability to buy what's needed as needed is better than buying more than is needed today."

Hitachi Vantara and Google Cloud Launch Hybrid Cloud Operation Management Solution

Jan 5, 2024

Hitachi Vantara, the modern infrastructure, data management, and digital solutions subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., is debuting the Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) for GKE Enterprise, a unified platform for managing hybrid cloud operations developed in partnership with Google Cloud. Designed with Google Distributed Cloud Virtual (GDCV), Hitachi UCP for GKE Enterprise aims to rectify the growing divide between a demand for cloud native platforms operating across several environments and the exponential increase in data generation.

While the demand for a multi-environment cloud platform continues to rise, the complexity of data grows in tandem. As a result, enterprises require a solution that not only simplifies data management, but propels digital transformation.

This is the need that prompted the development of GDCV on Hitachi UCP, enabling enterprises to modernize their applications while also optimizing infrastructure and improving the security of hybrid cloud systems.

GDCV on Hitachi UCP merges two powerful fronts, bringing Hitachi UCP’s agile cloud infrastructure and GDCV’s scalability together to increase the efficiency of hybrid cloud applications and the systems it relies on. The solution can be deployed and managed from within on-premises data centers, cloud environments, or edge locations, meeting organizations where they are in their modernization journeys.

“Our collaboration brings together Hitachi Vantara's highly available, high-performance integrated cloud infrastructure and GDCV's robust container orchestration and management capabilities,” said Dan McConnell, senior vice president, product management for storage and data infrastructure at Hitachi Vantara. “As generative AI reshapes the digital landscape, GDCV on Hitachi UCP enables organizations to confidently leverage the potential of hybrid cloud environments. This turnkey solution equips them to thrive and make the most of the ever-expanding data-driven opportunities in the digital era.”

GDCV on Hitachi UCP enables enterprises to:

“Our partnership with Hitachi Vantara represents the latest in modern cloud infrastructure, offering customers a single source for systems, solutions, and services,” said Sridhar Devarapalli, product director at Google Cloud. “Together, we provide a reliable and secure hybrid cloud experience, helping customers accelerate their digital transformation journeys.”

Hitachi Vantara and Google Cloud’s partnership echoes a larger trend surrounding solution engineering, where combining individual powers can more aptly serve the differing needs of all enterprises, according to the company.

“In today's rapidly evolving business ecosystem, the industry's hunger for cloud-based solutions from strategic partners has become more than just a trend—it's an essential survival strategy,” said Steve White, program vice president, Channels and Alliances at IDC. “Embracing cloud-based collaborations isn't just a matter of staying ahead; it's the key to unlocking unparalleled agility for customers and competitiveness today and in the future for those partnering.”

To learn more about Hitachi Vantara’s partner program, please visit https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/partners/become-partner.html.

For more information about this news, please visit https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html.

JAXA and Hitachi look into dry-process all-solid-state batteries

One of the focal points in the future space industry is the formation of constellation systems using small satellites, or even nano-satellites, and a key component in miniaturizing satellites is the development of compact, lightweight batteries: existing...