Hitachi Data Systems is continuing its aggressive push into the storage market, today unveiling a new cloud storage software offering designed specifically to enable more rapid provisioning and deployment of storage systems without needing new hardware.
The Hitachi Content Platform 2.3 (HCP) provides essential security, reliability and multitenancy for storage systems in cloud infrastructures and is meant to eliminate storage “islands,” so different systems can access content and there is no need for separate storage systems for each content type.
The Hitachi Content Platform is a software solution for HDS and non-HDS storage systems alike, so no new hardware is required. Indeed, that’s one of its main selling points: leveraging existing hardware.
“Cloud-based or virtualized storage consolidates and virtualizes disks and controllers to scale capacity and performance and provide enhanced resiliency while reducing both CAPEX and OPEX for service providers and end-users,” Miki Sandorfi, chief strategist for file and content services at HDS, told InternetNews.com.
HCP for cloud storage handles archiving, business continuity, creating content depots and consolidation of other silos. It can serve enterprise content storage needs in both public and private cloud environments within a single optimized cluster.
Sandorfi said there will be a mix of both on-premises and off-premises storage as firms move to the cloud. Just how much off-site storage they embrace will vary based on the size of the firm, due to compliance rules.
“The bigger the company, more conservative they are. They are not going to switch wholesale from onsite to offsite. Consumers are willing, but the enterprise is not,” he said.
HCP has numerous security and data protection functions, including multitenant architecture, object versioning, retention and disposition services, encryption, immutability, high availability, search capabilities and more. IT managers can segregate data within different namespaces to prevent unauthorized access and provide different service level agreements (SLAs) for different data sets.
Because virtualized storage means on-the-fly provisioning, storage resources can shrink and grow as needed. This will allow central IT in large enterprises to charge different departments on a pay per use basis instead of per physical resource, said Sandorfi.
Hitachi Content Platform 2.3 is available now from Hitachi resellers.
