Analysis

posted on 04 March 2008 17:37

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We all thought we knew Hitachi Data Systems. It was that block storage supplier with a virtualising controller which could provide some NAS gateway services but went to BlueArc's Titan 2000 for proper NAS capabilities.

Yes, so far, so good, but it has suddenly elevated its file-focussed offerings through using BlueArc and Brocade to good effect. Let's try and unravel the three-way product announcement extravaganza that took place today.

Brocade
Brocade announced that high-end NAS supplier BlueArc would OEM its file virtualising and migration software StorageX. That meant a BlueArc Titan NAS box can virtualise other NAS boxes, from different vendors, connected to it. This is like the F5 (Acopia as was) ARX virtualising capability.

It's been a good week so far for Brocade as it also just announced it was buying a data centre IT professional services company, Strategic Business Systems. 

BlueArc
Next BlueArc doubled the performance of its current high-end Titan 2000 NAS product with the Titan 3000. It's the BlueArc mixture as before, super-charging NAS performance with proprietary FPGA-based hardware and eschewing the clustered approach which, co-incidentally, was also in view today as Exanet announced its new system. 

BlueArc, in which HDS has an investment, also announced an API for its Titan software and agreed to resell data discovery software from HDS that would use that API.

Now it's time to turn to HDS which made the most announcements today out of the three.

HDS
First HDS upgraded its high-end NAS product (HNAS) from the Titan 2000 to the Titan 3000. Secondly it announced a solid upgrading of its in-house NAS products with the Hitachi Essential NAS platform (HENP) provided in either filer (bundled disks) or gateway (no bundled disks) forms and positioned below the just upgraded HNAS product. These look good solid boxes, coming in 2-node, active-active clusters and supporting up to half a terabyte of file storage.

HDS is clear about its competition here; it's NetApp's 3000 series and the pricing will ensure that HDS offers, it says, better price/performance.

Next HDS upgraded its reference file repository product, the Content Archive Platform, with new software capabilities. Then it introduced a new Data Discovery Suite which builds up a known set of content-indexable file information stored on the CAP and HDS NAS platforms, HENP and HNAS. It's positioning DDS as the way for a business to get all its file-based data into a controlled and managed state so that compliance and eDiscovery requests can be handled efficiently and comprehensively.

To bring us back to the first announcement a component of DDS is Brocade's StorageX, making it an even better week for Brocade. As substantial icing on Brocade's already tasty cake, NetApp announced it would resell Brocade's DCX datacentre backbone switch. Michael Klayko must be patting his team on their backs. It doesn't get much better than this in partnership terms - well, not unless EMC were to sign up to resell StorageX and the rest of the FAN product set.

HDS now has a substantially strengthened file services and file storage offering. BlueArc has enhanced its NAS hardware very nicely indeed and has a creditable response to Isilon afficionados. It has also improved its software portfolio with StorageX and the API access to Titan software.

All three of these suppliers have improved their market standing as a result of this tri-partite announcement set and can cross-reference each other in their own and their channel partners' sales activities. I guess it's a case of congratulations all round and lets see what the respose is from other suppliers in these markets.