Hitachi Expands Strategic Partnership With VMware to Help Customers Scale IT Infrastructures and Accelerate Cloud Deployments

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., today announced a new embedded OEM agreement with VMware to further scale customers’ IT infrastructures and accelerate their cloud deployments. With the expanded partnership, Hitachi Data Systems will bundle VMware cloud infrastructure software and sell individual software licenses to provide organizations with complete, converged infrastructure solutions, services and support. These offerings will help organizations to effectively and easily build and manage their physical and virtual data center initiatives. HDS will spotlight its virtualization and cloud technologies in VMware environments and feature demonstrations and breakout sessions at VMworld 2012, August 26-30, at Moscone Center in San Francisco.

“Customers want a fully virtualized IT infrastructure that helps them scale and be agile while lowering costs,” said Mike Walkey, senior vice president, Global Partners and Alliances, Hitachi Data Systems. “This agreement is significant because it allows Hitachi Data Systems to manage support of the HDS and VMware components, and provide customers with the reliability and expertise they’ve come to know from both HDS and VMware. This integrated foundation for customers’ growing VMware environments helps them realize their data center or cloud investments.”

“VMware and Hitachi Data Systems share a vision to help customers deliver adaptive, high performing and reliable IT services,” said Scott Aronson, senior vice president, Global Channels and Alliances, VMware. “The combination of reliable, high-performance server and storage technologies from HDS, coupled with VMware’s extensive virtualization and cloud infrastructure expertise will provide customers with a solution to further reduce IT costs and protect their existing investments.”

The enhanced OEM agreement enables HDS to resell VMware cloud infrastructure technologies such as VMware vSphere, VMware vCloud Director, VMware vCenter Server and VMware View to support virtual desktop infrastructure deployments, as well as VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager and the VMware vShield product family. The agreement strengthens the long-standing HDS and VMware partnership.

Since 2002, Hitachi Data Systems and VMware have delivered innovative, end-to-end virtualization for storage consolidation, backup and archiving, business continuity and storage management. As an Elite-level partner in the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program, and a VMware Ready program partner, HDS bridges the gap between server and storage infrastructures in customers’ data centers. HDS also helps customers optimize the operational efficiency and resiliency of their IT environments to save significant costs.

HDS Optimized Solutions for Virtualized Environments at VMworld 2012

Attendees of VMworld 2012 can experience the full technical capabilities and customer benefits of integration among HDS and VMware technologies. As a Gold sponsor, HDS will demonstrate the power of its technologies for VMware environments through presentations, in-booth demonstrations and videos in Booth #709. Speaking sessions include:

In-booth demonstrations, videos and presentations will highlight 1) how customers can integrate their storage management with the VMware platform, 2) implement a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution, 3) create a metro storage cluster architecture for VMware vSphere 5, 4) monitor performance and changes across the entire virtual infrastructure, and 5) implement a data protection strategy.

Demonstrations include:

• Hitachi Storage Cluster for VMware vSphere 5 – Reference architecture that maximizes availability and uptime within and across two data centers within metro distances
• Storage Manager for VMware vCenter Server – Allows for management of Hitachi storage via the VMware vCenter Server console, reducing administrative time
• Hitachi reference solution for VMware View 5 – Scalable, flexible solution with Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning fits different IOPS requirements and ensures maximum ROI
• Hitachi data protection solutions for VMware environments – Manage and protect hundreds of VMs on a single management interface with minimal impact to production environments