HDS touts federated search
SINGAPORE--Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has introduced a new software suite and storage platforms aimed at simplifying data management in large and midsize businesses.
Unveiled Tuesday were the Hitachi Data Discovery Suite (HDSS), Hitachi Essential NAS Platform, Hitachi High-Performance NAS (HNAS) Platform 3000 series and an upgraded version of the Hitachi Content Archive Platform (HCAP).
Hubert Yoshida, vice president and chief technology officer at HDS, said at a media briefing that the announcement bolsters the company's service-oriented storage vision, which "mirrors" the service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach.
Pointing to a trend of explosive growth in unstructured data by 2010, Yoshida said helping companies align storage resources to business requirements meant putting different storage services--such as file services or replications services--on a common platform so that the services can be used in appropriate combinations.
The Hitachi Data Discovery Suite (HDSS) offers federated search across HDS' NAS and content archive environment via a single query, which U.S.-based Yoshida claims to be an industry first. The HDSS is built upon search technology licensed from Fast, a company Microsoft in January said it would acquire.
By end June, the HDSS will also allow the archival files from the HNAS to HCAP based upon on policies. Users can also retrieve files from HCAP to HNAS interface, during projects for example.
"So the Exchange user on a HNAS file system can retrieve his own documents in the archive, without having to go to a separate ISV (independent software vendor) to do that retrieval--this gives [users] a big deal of flexibility," said Yoshida.
The value of going into the archive, he added, is that there is a "managed environment for unstructured data" as users deal with a copy that is "stored in an immutable format". This becomes especially helpful for compliance purposes.
Ravi Rajendran, general manager of Asean at HDS, noted that the HDSS will appeal to industries such as education, financial services, government, healthcare, manufacturing and telecoms.
The products, generally available by end March, will be available in 10 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.