INDUSTRY

ORLANDO, FL -- Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT), today announced the availability of a certified, end-to-end 2-Gigabit per second (Gbps) SAN solution. Customers can now, for the first time, purchase a complete 2-Gbps solution consisting of all the necessary components -- certified, supported and sold by Hitachi Data Systems. These state-of the-art components, combined with implementation services from Hitachi Data Systems, enable customers to build high-performance, scalable flexible information infrastructures on which their businesses can depend. "Hitachi Data Systems is at the leading edge in delivering a certified 2-Gigabit SAN solution to our customers," said Steve East, vice president, Solutions Engineering, Storage Solutions Business Unit, Hitachi Data Systems. "Following our Freedom Data Networks open strategy, we choose the best-of-breed products from leading vendors like Brocade and Emulex to build networked storage solutions for our customers. Working together with our partners to certify our products gives our customers confidence that the SAN will work as advertised in real life applications." With Brocade's announcement today of the Silkworm 3800 switch, the basic components of the 2-Gbps solution are now available. These include the Hitachi Freedom Storage(TM) Thunder 9200(TM) and Lightning 9900(TM) storage systems, the Emulex Lightpulse(TM) LP9002L Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA), and the Silkworm 3800 switch, a 16-port, dual-speed, enterprise-class switch designed to handle scalability and performance requirements of large scale SANs. This open, non-proprietary 2-Gbps SAN solution will soon become available with broader options as infrastructure components from other SAN vendors are certified for operation with Hitachi storage systems. "Brocade and Hitachi Data System's have worked closely together to quickly deliver and certify 2Gbps technology to the market," said Jay Kidd, vice president, Product Marketing, Brocade. "This is good news for customers who have been waiting to build faster, more reliable SAN solutions that meet their business requirements." With access to high speed 2-Gbps connectivity, and highly available design options such as redundant fabric paths and switches, data replication and cluster fail-over software, enterprise customers can now take full advantage of faster access with data intensive applications such as video streaming, E-commerce, messaging, email and web servers. "Hitachi Data Systems was first to market with 2 Gbps Fibre Channel capability for all its storage systems," said Robert Montague, Managing Director, System Area Networks Research, at securities firm Dain Rauscher Wessels. "Now they're following up by packaging a complete set of 2-Gbps components in an off-the-shelf SAN. They've certified the solution end-to-end and are selling and supporting all the parts. This gives customers a quick and easy way to take advantage of the high performance offered by 2-Gbps technology." For further information visit www.hds.com