HITACHI CONTINUES TO DRIVE BLADE SERVER INNOVATION BY BRINGING TRUE ENTERPRISE CAPABILITIES TO MID-MARKET
-- Powered by Energy Efficient Intel Technology, New BladeSymphony 320 is Simple to Deploy, Reliable, and Easy to Manage; Ideal for Mid-Market Companies, Enterprise Branch Offices --
BRISBANE, Calif., April 17, 2007 – In the latest indication of its position as the leading innovator in the blade server market, Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT / TSE 6501), today introduced BladeSymphony® 320, a reliable, simple to deploy and easy to manage blade server ideal for mid-market companies and enterprise branch offices. Powered by energy efficient, industry-standard Intel® technology, BladeSymphony 320 provides mid-market customers with true enterprise capabilities.
The unveiling of BladeSymphony 320, a 6U, 10-slot blade server, comes less than five months after Hitachi introduced BladeSymphony 1000 with Virtage, the industry’s first enterprise-class blade server. BladeSymphony 320, which combines the best features of a compact, lightweight, modular system with enterprise-class functionality such as high-compute density and reliability, is ideal for customers that require reliable compute power on demand in a form factor that is easy to use and deploy. And with a 110-volt power option, customers can get it up and running simply by plugging it into an existing wall socket. No special power or cabling is required.
“Once again, Hitachi is re-inventing the blade server market,” said Elizabeth King, vice president and general manager of Hitachi Server Systems Group. “Blade server customers both large and small need flexibility and scalability – mainframe features in a blade-server form factor. We answered that need first for the enterprise with BladeSymphony 1000 with Virtage. Now, we’re answering it for the mid-market with BladeSymphony 320.”
With the BladeSymphony 320, Hitachi is also continuing its long-time partnership with Microsoft in Japan and expanding the relationship globally to the North American market, as it did previously with BladeSymphony 1000.
“We’ve been working with Hitachi in the blade server market for several years in Japan, and with its recent expansion into the North American blade server market, Hitachi is working with Microsoft to become an agent of change,” said Bill Laing, general manager, Windows Servers Division at Microsoft Corp. “By partnering in both geographies, Hitachi and Microsoft are giving our customers solutions that enable their businesses, no matter what the size, to become more dynamic and self managed.”
For mid-tier customers, BladeSymphony provides fast, easy-to-manage access to reliable computing power and an industry-leading platform for server consolidation. For enterprise customers, the new server provides a simple, remotely manageable and cost-efficient way to consolidate data center servers and mission-critical workloads, whether in their own facility or in a co-location facility.
“Hitachi entered the North American blade server market running and, in a span of months, has already established itself as an innovative new player,” Matthew Eastwood, program vice president at IDC said. “With its new BladeSymphony 320, it continues the pattern it set with BladeSymphony 1000 – designing blade server systems that break new ground in terms of functionality and efficiency.”
The BladeSymphony 320 can provide the same computing power in a single chassis as multipleracks of rack-mount servers, enabling a space savings of as much as 60 percent. With as many as 10 two-socket, quad-core processors servers per chassis (80 cores per chassis and 560 cores per 42U rack), the system offers more cores per cubic foot than existing blade server racks.
“As with the BladeSymphony 1000, one of the key features of BladeSymphony 320 is that it is built on industry standard Intel® architecture,” said Diane Bryant, vice president, Digital Enterprise Group, and general manager, Server Platforms Group, Intel Corp. “The ability of the BladeSymphony 320 to utilize dual and quad core Intel® Xeon® processors is a tremendous benefit for blade server customers of all sizes and allows enhanced levels of blade server compute density. Simply put, Hitachi’s BladeSymphony is a great example of platform innovation built on the Intel Xeon processors.”
Additional features of the BladeSymphony 320 include:
• 19-inch rack compatible
• Multi-configurable power supplies with multi-power support capabilities
• Hot-swappable fan modules with redundant fans, a key cooling advantage
• “N+M” cold stand-by feature. A step ahead of typical “N+1” redundancy, Hitachi’s unique N+M feature provides multiple backup servers in order to provide cascading fail-over capabilities that result in minimized downtime even in the event of multiple failures.
In October 2005, Hitachi, Ltd. established the server systems business unit in Hitachi America, Ltd., to provide server-based solutions in North America. Hitachi’s highly scalable and performance-oriented blade server platform, “BladeSymphony,” is part of Hitachi’s global IT platform business operation in North America. The business unit is responsible for sales and marketing, business development, and operating a comprehensive services and support infrastructure that can serve customers on a 24x7 basis.