Hitachi Vantara Targets Mid Market with Expanded All-Flash Storage Device Range

January 04, 2021

Hitachi Vantara expanded its E Series line of high performance NVMe all-flash arrays, additions to the HNAS family of NAS solutions, and introduced the Hitachi Virtual Storage as a Service aimed at midsized enterprises. The company also unveiled new initiatives designed to enable channel partners to help midsized enterprise customers accelerate into a new era of digital business platforms and ecosystems.

With data volumes growing nearly twice as fast as IT budgets (19% Y/Y vs. 10% Y/Y)1, a critical pain point is storing and making that data accessible for customers and their applications. With fewer IT staff and resources, midsize customers are eager for reliable solutions that can reduce their storage costs and drive efficiencies. Hitachi Vantara's solutions address the most important needs of midmarket buyers, providing outstanding value and pricing for customers and partners.

"Just like any large enterprise, a company of our size needs solid infrastructure that is able to deal with mushrooming data demands," said Robert Koppelstetter from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Hospital of Munich in Germany. "Hitachi Vantara's move into our segment means we don't have to compromise on reliability or performance while building out our state-of-the-art digital infrastructure to drive existing and new business opportunities for our organization."

"Hitachi Vantara has long been the gold standard for high-performance data storage but today we are raising the bar for midmarket storage too," said Bobby Soni, president, Digital Infrastructure, Hitachi Vantara. "We are enabling all the industry leading capabilities and intelligent software that have fueled the success of the VSP 5000 down market to our new E-series midmarket products, with aggressive price points and enhanced ease of use. With our new as-a-Service offering, we're further easing the burden of managing infrastructure so customers can focus on what matters most – managing their business."

"Hitachi Vantara and our partners are excited to extend these powerful new enterprise-class offerings to midsized organizations to empower them to accelerate their transformation and achieve their business objectives – all at an attractive price point," said Kimberly King, global vice president, Strategic Partners & Alliances at Hitachi Vantara.

New Offerings to Serve Midsize Markets

Delivering choice and affordability, Hitachi Vantara today introduced two new offerings.

The company is expanding the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform E Series line with the addition of VSP E590 and E790, new all NVMe midrange all-flash models that bring enterprise-class features and benefits to customers of all sizes whose businesses are outpacing their existing infrastructure and need support for modern business processes like DevOps.
- The new E series features intelligent embedded management capability designed to dramatically simplify all aspects of the E series from rapid installation to automated provisioning and intelligent performance management, top priorities for smaller IT teams. For customers planning larger deployments, and seeking greater end-to-end analytics, workflow orchestration, and automation, the VSP E Series systems are also compatible with Hitachi's advanced, enterprise-grade management software, Hitachi Ops Center.
- VSP E590 and E790 are 2U platforms that enable best-in-class performance and new levels of simplicity with integrated data protection and copy data management capabilities to protect and simplify the day-to-day management of your data.
- They leverage the same SVOS RF operating system as the VSP 5000 Series for guaranteed data reduction and efficiency.
  - It offers performance and capacity in a condensed footprint at a price that won't break the bank.
  - AI-powered Advanced Data Reduction (ADR) in the Hitachi VSP E Series portfolio drives capacity efficiencies so midrange customers can make the most of limited space.
Available through partners, Hitachi Virtual Storage as a Service provides enterprise-class cloud storage services specifically designed for midmarket needs. It is tailored for medium businesses with powerful, predictable storage services, delivered as a managed service either on-premises or co-located. With the flexibility of a consumption-based pricing model, it provides predictable rates for easy budgeting and a fast self-service console for agility to adapt to changing infrastructure needs. Additional benefits include:
- 99.99% uptime service level with fast sub-millisecond response time.
- Simplicity for partners to manage and easy for customers to subscribe while providing enterprise performance at competitive rates.
- Enterprise-class service availability and performance allow customers to harness cloud economics without relinquishing control.
- Agile self-service console for easy oversight and planning.
- "Faster-to-market" capabilities with an elastic and accelerated storage infrastructure.
Hitachi Vantara also introduced the HNAS 5000 family, a simple, efficient storage solution for distributed enterprise and datacenter application workloads which allows customers to consolidate file data on the same Hitachi Vantara infrastructure they already trust. It offers:
- Increased productivity of a shared storage infrastructure. Customers can add files to any VSP system for a one-stop-shop solution consolidating a wide range of workloads.
- Reduced expenses by offloading file data based on rules and policies to any type of remote target including public cloud.

Velocity and Value for Partners
As Hitachi Vantara looks to intensify its focus around the expansive midmarket segment with its new tailor-made VSP E Series arrays and partner-delivered Hitachi Virtual Storage as a Service offering, the company's partner ecosystem will be critical. They can help provide scale, identify opportunities, extend reach and deliver the solutions that will address customer pain points.

To ensure that registered partners are equipped to accelerate penetration of this space with these new offerings, Hitachi Vantara offers a range of tools and enablement resources, including:

A dynamic pricing tool that exponentially simplifies and speeds the deal process via deal pricing guidance and automated deal approval workflows.
Hitachi Guru, a midrange storage recommendation tool.
Rich, stackable incentives.
Simplified training, sandbox and online labs to expand partner knowledge and accelerate sales opportunities.
Pre-built, customizable, easy-to-launch marketing campaign assets in our Partner Marketing Hub.

"Unlike large enterprises, midsize companies don't have large IT staffs or enjoy the benefits of multi-million-dollar IT budgets," said Enrico Signoretti, analyst, GigaOm Research. "They are often stumped to find reliable solutions that can reduce IT spend, especially storage costs. Hitachi Vantara's expanded E-Series line of high performance NVMe all-flash arrays and new Virtual Storage as a Service targeted at the business-critical workloads of midsized customers should be a welcome addition to the market."

Partner Endorsement for Hitachi Vantara Midmarket Solutions

APAC
"The new VSP E590 and E790 solutions from Hitachi Vantara make desired enterprise-class features and benefits accessible to customers at an attractive midmarket price point, helping a whole new class of customers realize the power of their data."
Jung Gyu Yang, Hyosung Information Systems, CEO

"Hitachi Vantara has been the gold standard in digital infrastructure. Today's announcements open access to these world-class solutions to a whole new class of customers."
Summer Xia, Ronglian Group Ltd., General Manager of Alliance

EMEA
"The expanded VSP E Series from Hitachi Vantara combined with EverFlex helps us deliver high-performance solutions with predictable, transparent pricing, allowing us to offer customers outstanding value and help them accelerate their digital transformation journeys."
Thomas Kleinkuhnen, Director Enterprise Infrastructure, Tech Data GmbH & Co. OHG

"Now more than ever, customers are pressed to do more with less. The new Hitachi VSP E590 and E790 offerings enable midsized organizations to harness the performance, scalability, and resilience of enterprise-class solutions without sacrifice."
Paweł Pastor, TechData Poland, Advanced Business Unit Director

Americas"Many customers, particularly those in midmarket, have previously felt that digital transformation was out of reach due to cost or complexity. With these new offerings from Hitachi Vantara, we can help them achieve the benefits of transformation without sacrifice for real-world business impact."
Rich Naber, Storage IT Solutions, VP of Solutions Consulting

"Future proofing is important to our customers. The intuitive embedded management of the Hitachi VSP E Series allows our customers to take advantage of the new ease of use interface with built-in path to federated management if required over time."
Alan Rogers, Stoneworks, Chief Technology Officer