The Hindu Business Line : What’s in store for storage services

In today’s storage climate, administrators and business professionals must choose between a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, where the most demanding service-level agreements define core functionality, or a ‘mix-match-and-manage’ solution that involves complex combinations of incompatible hardware, software and processes, according to Vivekanand Venugopal, Director (Solutions, Products and Services), Asia-Pacific, Hitachi Data Systems.

“The service offerings have changed dramatically. Business units do not want to pay for services that they don’t need. Our services-oriented storage solutions are aimed at dramatically altering the current stranglehold that storage architectures have on business flexibility.”

Speaking to eWorld on a range of issues surrounding storage and Hitachi’s attempt to redefine the space in India, he says storage as a service is definitely gaining ground, customers are becoming more demanding than ever.

Hitachi plans to succeed in its mission by unleashing a services-oriented approach and specific functionality that enable business units and IT to tailor storage services according to business needs and ensure that units only pay for what is actually used.

“These solutions apply service-oriented architecture concepts to storage and deliver a platform that offers sets of automated functions delivered as services, which can be invoked as needed.”

According to him, companies now have the means to replace “inefficient capacity-based chargeback models” with models that apply more relevant metrics.

“These new models also better ‘monetise’ all of the storage-based services they provide across the enterprise, delivering substantial breakthroughs in efficiency and business agility.”

Users’ take

HDFC Bank, which picked Hitachi Data Systems for its storage solutions, attributes its decision to Hitachi possessing the “best technology and overall price offering at the time of making the decision,” according to Harish Shetty, Vice-President of IT at the bank.

“For HDFC Bank, offering online customer services is real-time connectivity. The exponential growth of data storage requirements was becoming an issue. Slowing response times for users, shrinking backup windows and complicated regulations were compounding the challenges and risks for us.”

Another driver behind the decision was the bank’s need to migrate from a distributed DAS-server infrastructure to a storage area network (SAN) environment and also implement a disaster recovery plan.

“Rather than downplaying other vendors in the market, Hitachi showcased its own technology and benefits. We saw a clear-cut advantage with Hitachi compared to other vendors,” Shetty adds.

Punjab National Bank (PNB) is another key Hitachi client in India.

Having undertaken across-the-board computerisation, PNB felt the need to replace portable media that were handling data storage and backup with an enterprise-class storage solution to support more than 2,000 branches in core banking.

R.K. Bansal Operational Head of the bank’s IT Division, says: “We required a storage infrastructure that would be cost-effective, reliable, scalable and able to manage replication requirements, while being relatively easy to administer.”

The decision to pick Hitachi was made after Sun Microsystems, the bank’s technology partner for supply and installation of servers, recommended it.

Both banks elaborate how Hitachi’s solutions helped them.

According to C.N. Ram, Head of IT, HDFC Bank, implementing Hitachi’s solutions has enabled the bank to provide “scalable, available, reliable storage systems and a SAN environment for all our applications.”

The bank’s data warehouse has been able to more than double in storage size without changing any other configuration and without throughput rates being affected. By changing the way backups and batches are accomplished, the bank has been able to reduce the cycle times for end-of-day replication activities.

For PNB, Hitachi’s solution has contributed to taking overall performance improvements to new heights, says Bansal. “Some of the key benefits are high degree of reliability and scalability, reduction in per-transaction cost, increased business, greater convenience for customers and lower manpower requirement.”

Bullish on Indian market

Hitachi Data Systems is bullish on the Indian market and will continue to make significant investments in a planned, phased manner to meet the needs of customers and business partners, according to Venugopal.

He adds that though a majority of the customers in India are “very knowledgeable” and understand that information is their strategic asset, a significant market segment continues to view procuring of storage solutions from the angle of cost per MB. “This has been one of our biggest challenges.”

Data addition and retrieval is an ongoing process and Hitachi helps manage sudden surge in data inflow through its capability to dynamically allocate resources such as ports, cache and disks to specific application and workloads, ensuring the level of performance and security required by those applications.

“So, when there is a sudden surge in demand, the administrator can control shared storage resources by prioritisation of resources.

Without these tools, the administrator has to continually, and manually, monitor application performance, or risk situations where the storage requirements of one application negatively impact the performance of another.”

The company offers solutions for companies of all sizes, from large corporates to SMEs. In India, its focus is spread across all segments of enterprises.

“Hitachi’s traditional customers have typically come from the top end of the enterprise markets,” he says. “However, over the last couple of years we have focused on catering to market segments in the mid range and SME markets.”

He adds that the notion of enterprise infrastructure for only high-end applications or customers is changing fast.

“Applications and their unique characteristics dictate the storage service selection. So, an enterprise customer will have a range of storage infrastructure architected using a dynamic tiered storage strategy.”

murali@thehindu.co.in