Hitachi Vantara and Cisco: Even Better Together

Phil Vadon
VP and GM, HC2

October 01, 2024

Enterprise computing goes through constant cycles of reinvention, often driven by the arrival of an innovation with the potential to change everything. As a service business models and GenAI are both great examples. As anyone in this space can attest, the pace of change can age you quickly. But at the same time, it’s what makes the business so exciting. And dare I say, it’s what keeps everyone in it young. It’s a bit of a conundrum if you think about it.

One thing that’s certain, to navigate this world of endless change, it’s essential for IT leaders to have a core group of foundational technology partners to provide the stability and trust you need to stay on course through disruptive times. When you find them, you hold them close.

It’s EVEN BETTER when you find two of those trusted foundational enterprise partners working TOGETHER to drive even greater simplicity, efficiency, differentiation and value. That’s when you feel the confidence and freedom to truly pursue innovation. For Hitachi Vantara, it’s what makes us so proud to be working closely with our partners at Cisco to help our customers achieve truly great things.

Introducing Hitachi EverFlex with Cisco Powered Hybrid Cloud

Both Hitachi Vantara and Cisco have significantly evolved our business models over the past few years to embrace the as a service approach, adapting to the evolving technology landscape and customer needs. With Hitachi EverFlex with Cisco Powered Hybrid Cloud – part of our newly expanded EverFlex Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) portfolio – we’re upping the combined value for our customers substantially.

Here’s what we’re both bringing to this combined IaaS innovation party.

Hitachi Vantara: The Data Foundation the World Relies On

At Hitachi Vantara we’ve made several strategic moves to transition to an as a service model. Our offering includes EverFlex Storage as a Service (STaaS), which combines the flexibility and agility of the cloud with the security and compliance benefits of on-premises storage. This model allows customers to pay only for the storage they use, aligning costs with business needs while ensuring rapid scalability.

Hitachi Vantara has also embraced hybrid cloud solutions, offering integrated services with platforms like Microsoft Azure. Our Hitachi EverFlex Infrastructure as a Service consumption model supports scalable data storage with pay-per-use pricing, making it easier for businesses to manage enterprise IT costs. We’ve also expanded our EverFlex Managed Services offering, leveraging the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One) data platform.

Cisco: Connecting Everything to Make Anything Possible

Our partner Cisco has also embraced the as a service model through a variety of initiatives. Their network as a service (NaaS) model allows organizations to consume networking capabilities without owning or maintaining the infrastructure. This approach offers flexibility, agility and continuous access to the latest networking technologies.

Cisco+ provides hybrid cloud technologies and other services through an as a service model. Their initiative aims to deliver faster time to value and solve complex IT challenges by leveraging their deep partner ecosystem. And Cisco’s IoT solutions use cloud-native, converged core network functions to support seamless transitions from 3G to 5G. This model allows deployment on various edge servers or clouds, enhancing scalability and flexibility.

Both individually and together, these two foundational companies have leveraged their expertise and technical innovation and advancements to offer more flexible, efficient, customer-centric solutions with the ease and simplicity of as a service models. Enabling infrastructure modernization that not only meets the changing needs of our customers but also positions both companies as even stronger leaders in our respective spaces.

Hitachi EverFlex and Cisco, Unlocking the Power of Hybrid Cloud

At Hitachi Vantara, we've been listening closely to our customers and partners, shaping a business rooted in addressing their most complex and critical needs. We've spent 14 years perfecting our EverFlex Managed Service offering, delivering both a tailored and standard service catalog that drives real business outcomes and value. That’s 14 years charging only for what our customers use, backed by robust SLAs. And 14 years learning and expanding on our knowledge base, ensuring we help our customers stay ahead of the curve.

Today, it’s all coming together to serve customer needs across increasingly diverse, distributed hybrid cloud environments, with Hitachi EverFlex and the power of Cisco.

What does it all mean? We're rebranding, relaunching and massively expanding the Hitachi EverFlex Catalog to include Cisco UCS, Cisco network and Cisco observability and management into our fully automated stack. More specifically, there is the Hitachi Cisco Hybrid Cloud partnership leveraging the power of a single, common control plane, Everflex Control.

As for our delivery model? We've opened up our complete RACI, allowing partners and customers to pick and choose the support they need. Interested in white label solutions? EverFlex with Cisco powered Hybrid Cloud has you covered there, too.

Better Together, In More Ways Than One

Let’s get down to specifics on how we take the best of both companies to enable you to excel. It comes down to three key areas where we relentlessly focus our efforts:

Technology: Our confidence in offering SLAs is based on the unbreakable commitment both Hitachi Vantara and Cisco stand behind.
Operations: Our commitment to a near zero delivery model through our years of automation and machine learning that Everflex Control is built on.
Financial/Commercial: We stand behind our solutions with an all-in per unit cost built on our model of executing to a near zero consumption-gap model. This represents a financial commitment to leveraging today's best practices and innovative technologies, while also committing to a commercial model aligned with our five-year roadmap.

So, what does this mean for our customers?

It means you have more power than ever to unleash innovation in hybrid enterprise environments, supporting your most demanding, mission-critical workloads and applications (generative AI and whatever comes next). With a self-service, on or off prem, consumption-based solution – optimized for performance, observability and resilience – and all backed by two of the biggest and most trusted companies not just in this business, but also in the world.

Now that’s what it means for our customers when we say, Hitachi and Cisco = Better together.

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