CIOIN

Randy DeMont, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Services and Support, Hitachi Data Systems talks about the key technology trends and hopes to pave the way for customers adopting cloud services.

CIO: According to a recent report from IDC, approximately $3 billion worth of external storage hardware (of a total of $5 billion) was sold outside of the US in Q2 2010. What does this mean to you as an active player in the market?

Randy DeMont: About 40 percent of our business comes from the US and  60 percent comes from outside. We are seeing a huge demand from Western Europe and this has always been a strong market for us. And you can see same kind of business opportunities in Asia as well.

We typically see China has 25 percent to 50 percent market growth per quarter and Asia-Pacific has been consistently ranging between from 16 percent to 20 percent per quarter. We are clearly seeing an outstanding opportunity not only in United States but also outside of it. Our majority investment is not very US centric.

CIO: Do you see a particular reason behind this trend?

Randy DeMont: I think economies are growing faster and many large companies have been making big investments around the world. Moreover, there are the big global expansions that are happening. And these economies are growing faster than the US economy which requires sustained information technology adoption.

CIO: Can you highlight some of the key technology trends outside of the US and specifically in APAC and India? Are these trends radically different or are they comparable to the market of US and Europe?

Randy DeMont: In the last 31 years of storage, there had to be a different strategy for customers as the market was so different from today. But today, the world is a very small place and for example the requirements of HDFC bank in India are almost the same with a bank of US. In the US there is a maturity level which does drive certain trends but there aren't many differences in APAC and Indian market as such.

CIO: So do you see a gap or a lag in APAC or in India in terms of technology?

Randy DeMont: No, we do not see a lag in terms of technology. This is because of the nature of the Indian market and the predominance of sophisticated R&D outsourcing.

CIO: So, can you elaborate on the kind of technology that sees serious uptake in India?

Randy DeMont: We are seeing a tremendous need for simplifying the management of the infrastructure in areas like storage and computer application. What we had decided a decade ago was 'virtualization simplified' and today there is an added virtualization capability that increases the veracity of the business. If you simplify the things, you can act faster.

CIO: Can you throw some light on the recent announcements that were made?

Randy DeMont: We have announced a platform which is called 'Virtual Storage Platform' (VSP). Because of the huge data growth that is taking place, customers need the ability to add capacity non-disruptively and that's where VSP provides the second dimension in to scale out in terms of capacity and at the same time maintain the performance level.

Customers are also looking for the technologies that can help them extend the usage of the assets of their datacenter. That's where VSP could be in a position to collaboratively integrate with multiple storage infrastructures and transfer the intelligence that we have as a storage controller. So the 3D scaling is very unique in the industry.

CIO: So, how does cloud computing fit in to this proposition?

Randy DeMont: We had decided, a couple of years back, that we will help the customers to build the infrastructure on cloud. And this particular platform provides the perfect environment for organization to build their infrastructure on cloud to provide information services and infrastructure service.

Because of the unique capability of this platform to service block file and content data, we will help customers in integrating the content on cloud in the infrastructure cloud as well. And over a period of time customers can bring in a whole lot of intelligence in transition through the information cloud. This platform provides an ideal environment and with this announcement we will help increase operational efficiencies.

CIO: So, it would be right to say that this will be a complimentary technology and more of a catalyst for the adoption of cloud.

Randy DeMont: If you think of cloud as an access methodology, we do an infrastructure enablement and that's what the cloud is. A couple of months ago, we had introduced a number of cloud offerings on the enablement side. In a private cloud domain we also partner with the service providers in India and offer a revenue model to storage services to consumers and small businesses in India.

CIO: With that if you could tell us the vision that you have for your customers? Where do we go from here, what more can we expect?

Randy DeMont: I would love to see the growth of our client base, and just to look to improve the trusted relationship that we have with them. I would also love to see huge Hitachi storage implementations across domains and turn our customer's data center to an information center and translate that into business growth.

I also believe that customers should not only focus on a price strategy when they are doing their evaluation of building private cloud infrastructure. Especially, when the Indian economy is on a boom towards a massive growth they will get caught up if they follow price as the strategy. The customers should make an investment which will benefit them in the long term.