Virtualisation Heats Up
Virtualisation Heats Up
December 5, 2006: Proving that storage virtualisation is far from a futuristic novelty, Hitachi has used its landmark shipment of 4,500 intelligent virtual storage controllers to suggest it is a lucrative market, and one they have a hold on.
It’s a milestone that Hitachi says, outpaces competitors still attempting to get a foot in on the market. As the first vendor to jump on the storage controller-based virtualisation bandwagon, Hitachi says it’s now the market leader and driving the wagon after creating this new, market category.
Tony Asaro, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group believes Hitachi’s strategy on virtualisation is well-positioned for the next generation and ready to play with the new rules that are sure to drastically change the virtualisation marketing game. “As each day goes by, Hitachi gains greater insight, knowledge, experience, and customer footprint, and is becoming the leader in enterprise-class storage virtualisation, while leveraging its flagship Universal Storage Platform solutions,” he says. “It is a brilliant strategy and visionary in scope.”
Hitachi suggests that their strategy for success in the virtualisation space comes from the fact that its flagship products are also its virtualisation products. In particular, Hitachi points to the Universal Storage Platform and Network Storage Controller as contributing greatly to their virtualisation success.
Hitachi says its Universal Storage Platform continues to update and modernise to the dynamic nature of data storage. The platform powers an embedded virtualisation layer capable of managing up to 32 petabytes of internal and external storage, as well as simplified business continuity processes such as storage-agnostic remote copy.
While the move to virtualisation is still somewhat treated with hesitance by some organisations, many analysts point to the IT enabling capacity of virtualisation to meet the non-stop growth and need for storage.
“Storage virtualisation continues to be an IT imperative with the goal being better asset utilisation, consistent, dynamic and scalable performance with easily tiered storage, availability ad dynamic provisioning capabilities,” says Carl Greiner, senior vice president and analyst, Ovum.
Yet Phil Sargeant, research analyst for Gartner isn’t so sure of the storage virtualisation movement. He told an audience at the Gartner Symposium event in Sydney this year that he sees virtualisation as somewhat of a hyped up phenomenon. “Solutions available today are proprietary and you will need to look at it tactically,” he said. “We do not believe one is going to win out over another.”
However, with Hitachi’s 4,500 virtual storage solutions already shipped, numbers alone may prove Hitachi is on to a winning formula.