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What's that Dell? You're out? HDS punts pay-per-use cloud storage

Pay us, pay the other guy, we're not fussed

Hitachi Data Services will begin offering pay-per-use cloud storage services to its customers and for use by service providers to build their own services as part of its Cloud Service Provider programme.

This move by HDS comes as Dell withdraws from public cloud services and after its cancellation of its DX6000 object storage product.

Hitachi Cloud Services is a Hitachi Data Services (HDS) owned and managed, enterprise-level, public and enterprise-to-cloud offering. HCS allows enterprises to store their unstructured data in a remote HDS storage vault. With unstructured data volumes exploding, HDS ensures it is stored securely while users get simple and easy access to it.

HDS has announced an upgraded version of this which it is also offering in HCP Anywhere form, which is the new sync-'n'-share version of the underlying object-storage-based HCP storage system. This will provide BYOD end-user access to data that is firmly stored inside the enterprise's security cordon.

The vault is the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) array, a scalable object-based storage platform.

HDS says the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) product is part of a new cloud partner framework which includes cloud builder partners and cloud resellers. The CSP programme enables qualified cloud service providers to sell HDS's cloud services by building and managing their hosted cloud environments on HDS platforms and technologies. They also provide self-service capabilities for service provisioning, subscription management, and billing.

With HDS-managed cloud storage the company claims customers can reduce the total cost of ownership by 60 per cent and reduce the space needed for backups by 30 per cent. These comparisons are made against HDS's on-premises arrays. HDS says that savings against other suppliers' arrays could be greater though naturally this could also go the other way.

Hitachi Cloud Services

HDS says: "[This] offsite and enterprise-to-cloud management offering includes a set of sophisticated cloud storage services as well as REST API support to enable seamless interoperability with enterprise applications for integrated architectures for all information, both on site in customers' data centres and in the cloud."

According to a data sheet (PDF): "Hitachi Cloud Services delivers the three services described previously (File Tiering, File Serving, Microsoft SharePoint Archiving). These services are delivered in the form of one fully managed cloud service called Hitachi Cloud Service for Content Archiving."

Customers can, according to HDS:

  • Move content from primary storage into cloud storage
  • Back up files stored remotely
  • Monitor performance, and address any performance-related issues before they impact your service level agreements
  • Return version files to the cloud once they are changed
  • Handle on-demand capacity requests
  • Pay for service based on a fixed rate per storage unit per month

The offering can include value-added services such as index and search across multiple data types.

HDS's strengthening of its object storage line is coincidentally happening as EMC is bulking up its object storage strategy with ViPR. It appears that Dell may be slipping away from being a tier 1 storage provider.

HDS says its Hitachi Cloud Services are available today in the US direct, and globally later this year through Hitachi TrueNorth partners. The Hitachi Cloud Service Provider programme is available today in the US to Hitachi Cloud Service Providers and through HDS partners later this year. ®

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