Hitachi Data Systems’ Approach – Enterprise Cloud

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), a global supplier of IT solutions for enterprises, provides a full portfolio of integrated hardware, cloud software, and cloud enablement services designed to bring a pre-engineered level of efficiency and predictability to creating a tuned cloud platform that meets the unique needs each customer.

HDS’ Goal

Reduce the time spent “building and maintaining your cloud,” and increase the time spent “using and exploiting your cloud.” End users and application owners/developers simply go to the cloud service portal, and based on the application characteristics, they select or have the system select the right set of services based on Service-Level Agreement (SLA) price and performance. The portal also includes support for off-premises cloud resources required in today’s increasingly hybrid cloud environment.

 

The platform provisions the resources in minutes, all the way from application down to infrastructure, placing the right workload in the private cloud. Or, if the resources are only required temporarily for a one-time need, the same system enables placement of the workload into the other types of cloud such as a companion off-premises hosted private cloud.

Their turnkey approach marries a tightly integrated pre-engineered hardware and SW infrastructure platform with the professional and managed services needed to build, maintain, and grow a cloud platform in less time. It enables agile deployment through an automated application and workload provisioning of current legacy applications — both bare-metal and virtualized applications — as well as supporting new container-based and cloud native scale-out applications built via a DevOps approach for IoT like workloads, enabling customers to concentrate of application development.

HDS’s pre-engineered solution with an application-centric approach is based on three linked elements:

  • A pre-engineered set of market leading compute, storage and network components orchestrated using HDS’s UCP/UCP Director that provides maximum flexibility, availability and security while minimizing operational burdens
  • Support for leading cloud system and orchestration software solutions (starting with VMware’s VCenter and VRealize suites) along pre-defined cloud service catalogs and management processes that speed time to deployment and ensure optimal performance
  • A well-developed set of complimentary cloud assessment, planning, design, deployment, and compatible hosted cloud managed services that ensures faster and more effective set up and sustained delivery of cloud services that meet the right requirements

HDS also recognizes that two key reasons companies want to adopt cloud operating models are to:

  1. Bore closely align IT expenditures with actual use
  2. Dramatically reduce the costs associated with hardware and software updates and migrations

In response, HDS is providing flexible commercial models that include traditional CAPEX, an on-demand utility, as well as a set of fully managed private/hybrid cloud managed services with a service catalog and SLA which removes the traditional CAPEX burden which many Enterprise clients find a challenge. These flexible financing and long-term support options reduce the risk to build, maintain, and operate a private cloud while improving governance, control, and service delivery, as well as providing full cost transparency and control.

Challenges

The key challenge for HDS as it rolls out its Enterprise Cloud portfolio of solutions will be to ensure that it delivers solutions which support all the preferred cloud software platforms that customers may want to leverage. Successful private cloud solutions are all about flexibility, but they must also be compatible with the growing range of hosted private cloud and public cloud services that companies will be using as well.