History 2001: HDS Scores Success with High-End SAN

Sun Microsystems has signed a 3-year “multi-billion dollar” agreement to resell, under the StorEdge 9900 name, Hitachi’s Lightning 9900 storage subsystems, which permit the configuration of a SAN to mainframes and/or open systems.

Hewlett-Packard recently renewed a similar accord with Hitachi for the same product, which HP brands XP512. That brings to 3 the number of companies that resell the machines, since along with the a fore mentioned OEMs, HDS also sells its own product. All of which raises the specter of some interesting battles on the horizon.

More importantly, these developments strengthen the threat to EMC, a major supplier of large storage units to Sun’s high-end Solaris customers.

The Sun/Hitachi accord also provides that StorEdge 9900 systems will be supported by both companies, and promises the integration of Sun HighGround SRM software, with a commitment to collaborate on future software developments.

Both partners will continue to sell their mid-range lines separately, the StorEdge T3 array for Sun, Thunder 9200 for HDS.

Furthermore, 2 more coups for the storage firm.

Big do-it-yourself retailer Home Depot will purchase hundreds of Hitachi’s Freedom Thunder 9200 disk subsystems for the retailer’s new stores currently being built across 450 US locations. It was already an HDS client for 5700 storage arrays deployed in more than one thousand stores.

And yet another big customer: US Data Authority in Boca Raton, FL, which plans to install more than 1,000TB on Freedom Lightning 9900s over the next 3 years.

HDS has also signed a new German system vendor, GE CompuNet Computer, to distribute its Lightning 9900 and Thunder 9200 storage subsystems.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 164 on September 2001 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.