Ramdas S, CRN, July 27, 1600hrs
Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is betting big on the hybrid storage model. According to the company, the model will take off soon, and over the next few years more enterprises will opt for a combination of physical storage and storage-as-a-service.
HDS is pushing its virtual storage platform (VSP) to enterprise resellers, and is planning to help partners deliver hybrid storage solutions.
The company does not plan to enter the storage-as-a-service business directly, but is eyeing players in the field. “We have already signed on with Sify in India, and in the next few months we will be announcing the names of some large storage-as-a-service companies which will be on our platform,” said Sunil Chavan, Director, Software Group & Cloud Solutions, Asia Pacific, HDS. “We see these cloud storage companies more as our strategic partners than customers, and are looking at business models where they can extend their support to the rest of our partner ecosystem.”
Chavan said that as with core computing infrastructure, where customers are betting on both public and private clouds to develop a hybrid cloud model, enterprise customers will depend on both cloud storage as well as physical storage. “We see enterprises running their mission-critical applications in physical storage infrastructure within their premises. However, increasingly, they will outsource non-mission-critical storage to a cloud storage provider.”
He believed that customers would like to see a single logical storage architecture irrespective of where their data sits. “This is where our VSP will help customers because it works irrespective of whether the customer has data stored in Hitachi boxes, at a cloud storage provider, or on third-party storage boxes. We can present a single, underlying platform deployment approach that will let customers build storage the way they want, which is going to be a very big USP going forward.” |