”We intend to grow our solutions services business”

Storage Area Management is the latest buzzword in the storage market. Patrick Lim, vice-president, Solutions, APIA, Hitachi Data Systems, spoke to VENKATESH GANESH on its value proposition

* You have been propagating Storage Area Management (SAM) in a big way. What’s it all about?

SAM is a process for managing the entire storage infrastructure of an organisation. We realise that storage is getting very complex, and that managing everything from logical units of storage on a disk array to the QoS provided to business applications is becoming increasingly difficult. Gartner says that SAM is growing in importance, particularly when one considers the fact that it can lower the TCO of storage, which accounts for approximately 50 percent of the total IT budget in the majority of organisations. In the final analysis, linking SAN, Storage Resource Management (SRM) and addressing QoS issues to provide mission-critical applications with the quickest response time with accelerated ROI would determine the effectiveness of the implementation of SAM.

* Everybody talks about low TCO and quick ROI. How does SAM address those needs?

Firstly, SAM is not a point solution but an integrated one. During our interactions we discovered that a lot of organisations are still grappling with issues related to storage. Accordingly, we devised a five-level layered approach.

At the first layer, which we have termed the base level, the SAM solution (called the HiCommand Storage Services Manager) tracks and identifies each storage resource from the disk-drive spindle to the application and everything in-between. Additionally, it automatically discovers new resources as and when they are added to the environment. This essentially reduces the need for administrators to locate and identify every resource, thereby reducing the need for deploying manpower.

Reporting, the next layer, helps an organisation understand the usage patterns of these storage resources. For example, some organisations may have stockpiled a lot of buffer (for storage) in case of an outage or emergency. They could use automated monitoring and reporting to determine the time when additional storage resources are needed, rather than resort to bulk storage.

The third layer involves the monitoring of the flow of data from a storage resource to an application. This ensures that the application receives the necessary QoS, besides controlling cost. It also ensures the availability and recovery of data that is delivered to the application.

At the next layer the storage and data flow information are correlated to the application and the required QoS. The final layer involves automation based on policy (as defined by the user) that uses business application rules to take care of routine tasks in addition to troubleshooting and managing large volumes of data. Putting together all these aspects would definitely yield higher ROI and lower TCO.

* We have been hearing about some change in the focus of Hitachi. What’s this transformation about?

Yes, we are moving into phase two of our transformation. Essentially this transformation is about moving from being a successful hardware infrastructure company to being an organisation that offers customers a better value proposition in terms of a total storage solution.

We had undergone phase one by moving from a mainframe to an open-systems-based company in 1999-2000. From that period onwards we have successfully transformed ourselves from a mainframe-centric company to a storage-centric one. Analysts even reported that our marketshare in the high-end enterprise storage segment was around 40 percent, and we managed to catch up with EMC. So the next question was, where do we go from here and where is the next growth opportunity going to come from? Our customers were interested in more offerings than the ones we offered. They face many business challenges, and wanted us to provide the entire suite of storage, services and support.

* So is Global Solutions Services (GSS) a part of the phase two that you talk about?

Right, it is an integral part of our phase two strategy. As we sold and implemented our hardware, we realised that managing a customer’s infrastructure was getting increasingly complex. To add to that, budgets are shrinking and data is exploding. Justifying investments, increasing productivity levels and adhering to complex service levels is giving sleepless nights to many a CIO.

Based on these insights, we decided to launch the GSS initiative in January 2003. We realised that we could offer more than just installation and implementation services in storage. The most common thing that we gathered was that a lot of storage vendors have a hardware-approach [of selling boxes regardless of their suitability to the network architecture and QoS] towards addressing storage issues.

The GSS group has now completed the groundwork to set up the infrastructure and position ourselves for storage-related services offerings. Basically, with GSS, we intend to grow our solutions services business.

For this we split GSS into solutions sales and solutions delivery lines. It will help Hitachi move into solutions centred around storage. We have been doing this in parts, but now we are formalising it as a strategy, rallying Hitachi’s entire global workforce to make it a global initiative.

* Unlike your competitors, Hitachi believes more in partnering than acquisitions. Your comments.

To date we have had very successful relationships with our partners, and therein lies our strength. Perhaps our competitors have different proprietary architectures that have issues with regards to managing risks, service levels, etc., which are accentuated with their acquisitions.

Recently we announced Enterprise Content Archival (ECA), and partnered with IXOS for offering this e-mail archiving product. Last year we signed a co-development partnership with AppIQ, which was the first time we signed a partnership with a software development company. We incorporated AppIQ and made it a core component of our entire SAM offerings. This stamps our intent to sell solutions centred around storage. We will not lose sight of our core offering—the Hitachi storage hardware technology—but along with the hardware, we want to offer our customers a lot more.

A recent survey conducted by IDC revealed that storage was on top of the priority list of CIOs. What’s more, the market is expected to grow by 37.5 percent by 2007.