Hitachi Vantara will leverage Tech Data’s Internet of Things’ capabilities to a greater extent than before, which is critically important in Canada, where new analytics-focused partners need to be recruited, and Tech Data is the sole Hitachi Vantara distributor.
Kimberly King, who now runs the Hitachi Vantara channel, indicated that the new program will be announced in April and will be rolled out in stages after that. She also noted that it will be very different from the existing Hitachi True North program.
Hitachi made multiple announcements of significance at their recent NEXT customer show, but they also gave some high level guidance about what’s coming in 2018.
In addition to forming a new company, Vantara, to consolidate around the IoT opportunity, Hitachi rebooted their Lumada IoT platform and announced their first IoT appliance, based on Lumada. While they were never close to the top in enterprise storage, their goal is to be the leader in the IoT space.
Hitachi has merged Hitachi Data Systems, Hitachi Insight Group and Pentaho into a new company aimed at being on the cutting edge of digital innovation.
HDS also announced that their hyper-converged Hitachi UCP HC platform has been upgraded with the new Intel processors and NVMe memory support.
The big improvements are to software and hardware capabilities on the core Hitachi Content Platform and to the Hitachi Data Ingestor Platform.
New API customization capabilities make this HDS platform easier for developers to use in end-to-end digital workplace solutions, while the UI and usability features have been enhanced.
Hitachi adds a Video Analytics solution to its Internet of Things portfolio, which also includes the Hitachi Video Management Platform and the Hitachi Visualization Suite.
The new content intelligence solution joins the Hitachi Content Platform, an integrated cloud-file gateway and an enterprise file sync and sharing platform as core elements of a broad object storage portfolio.
HDS adds top of the line models in both its all-flash F series, and hybrid flash G series, as well as the new SVOS 7 operating system.
The HC V240, HDS’ first hyper-converged appliance, is based on the VMware stack, but the hyper-converged road map is likely to broaden out beyond that.
Hitachi Data Systems has greatly deepened its strategic relationship with SAP around HANA in the last several years, and its new announcements, which cover from the low end of the market to the high, broaden that portfolio.
The enhancements to the HDS unified storage platform aimed at the enterprise and mid-market also now allow cloud tiering from the appliance itself, and new support for VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes assists performance in virtualized environments.
The new Hitachi Unified Compute Platform 6000 for Predictive Analytics integrates SAP Predictive Analytics software, and while aimed mainly at telcos and media service providers, may have a broader audience than that.
Hitachi Data Systems continues to expand the functionality of its platform introduced in 2013 as a sync ‘n’ share variant of its Hitachi Content Platform with new and enhanced features.
The Hitachi Hyper Scale-Out Platform, a new, next-generation technology, leverages technology acquired with Pentaho last year to provide an appliance that is aimed at Big Data, Data Lake and Internet of Things use cases now, and at broader use cases once an all-flash version is available later this year.
Hitachi’s Social Innovation strategy is designed to leverage analytics to drive their companies forward, and the new SAP HANA solutions are part of this strategy for HDS.
The new enhancements to the Hitachi Content Platform extends its value as an integrated content mobility solution.
Avnet CIO Steve Phillips, Storagecraft channel manager Shawn Massey, and Hitachi Data Systems CTO Hu Yoshida on this edition of the ChannelBuzz.ca Podcast.
