Hitachi Data Systems this week is joining the ranks of storage vendors offering a digital archiving solution with its new Hitachi Content Archive Platform.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based storage vendor's Hitachi Content Archive Platform allows content created by most types of applications to be archived into a common archiving repository and retrieved via a single archiving tool, said Hubert Yoshida, Hitachi's vice president and CTO.
Unlike EMC, which owns is own archiving solution, HDS is partnering with Waltham, Mass.-based Archivas on the technology to do the archiving, Yoshida said. "We're a storage company," he said. "We're not like EMC who buys Documentum and everything. We work with partners."
The Archivas software puts content from multiple sources into a centralized repository which enables a single tool to search all the content regardless of how created, Yoshida said. "If you don't have a centralized repository, you can't do centralized search," he said.
As content is moved into the archive, the content's metadata is put into a data management database along with the user's policies. At the same time, a full text scan is done of the content. This enables users to search the data while maintaining a copy of the original content, and also allows the hashing of an object based on the original data to be used to authenticate that the data was not changed, Yoshida said. All this is done without the use of APIs, therefore keeping the system open for use by most applications, he said.
That software also provides policy-based control, authentication, preservation, and protection of the data using HDS' SATA-based storage arrays, Yoshida said.
With the Hitachi Content Archive Platform, customers get long-term preservation and protection of immutable data, which is data that must be stored without change for regulatory compliance or corporate governance and litigation protection, Yoshida said.
The Hitachi Content Archive Platform initially works with HDS's new Workgroup Modular Storage line of midrange arrays in either 5-Tbyte or 10-Tbyte usable capacity modules. Yoshida said that the Platform will also work with HDS's TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform by year-end.
HDS is planning to go direct with its Hitachi Content Archive Platform initially while getting it ready for the indirect sales channel, Yoshida said. "This is new for us," he said. "We want to make sure we can walk first before we run."
HDS on Monday also said that a number of ISV partners have signed up to develop software that is interoperable with the Hitachi Content Archive Platform, including Computer Associates, Open Text, and Symantec.
