HDS Plans To Use Software And Partners In Bid To Be No. 1

That goal might seem optimistic, given the stagnant storage market. HDS, along with its Japan-based parent Hitachi Ltd., remains the world's fourth largest vendor of external disk-based storage systems, with 2002 revenue of about $1 billion, or a 7.7 percent share of that market, according to research firm IDC. That revenue was down about 31 percent from the year before.

However, the tight market does not daunt Townsend, who said HDS is still confident it can reach that goal, thanks to help from Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, which resell its enterprise-class devices, and from the channel, which drives a big part of HDS' midrange storage revenue.

Customers are looking to HDS' solution providers for help in integrating HDS technology into their IT infrastructures, said Townsend.

Because of that need, HDS is focusing on four areas where growth can best be achieved, he said.

The first is software under HDS' HiCommand storage management framework, Townsend said. Later this year, the company plans to introduce a policy engine that will allow customers to automate the management of their storage. "We will drive automated management of all resources, not just the hardware," Townsend said. "The value-add of VARs will be in populating the storage infrastructure with these policies."

There will also be other enhancements to HiCommand in 2003, including performance increases and improvements of the software and tools to better manage availability attributes, he said.

The second growth driver will include increasing the availability of vertically aligned solutions that combine offerings from ISVs and solution providers, said Townsend. HDS has already unveiled health-care solutions with Agfa and plans to unveil similar solutions in other areas depending on customers' return-on-investment expectations. "We are trying to build a better community between our VARs and our ISV partners to give our VARs better tools," he said.

HDS also plans to continue to enhance its 9900 series of enterprise arrays and 9500 series of midrange arrays, Townsend said. The most recent enhancements, unveiled earlier this month, included doubling of the 9900 V's capacity and increasing its connectivity to make it more applicable to data consolidation moves.

The company also expects to increase its NAS connectivity during the next six months, Townsend said. HDS in December unveiled a relationship with Network Appliance under which it would resell NAS Filers from that company. On those devices, data is stored on Hitachi arrays, instead of on internal disks, and can be access through the Filers.