Hitachi Has Enterprise Dropbox-alike, Promises Local Data Centre

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has launched a file sync and share service intended as an enterprise-level substitute for Dropbox or other consumer cloud storage systems. The company also promised it would have local data centres in the UK “soon”, possibly with partners.

Hitachi Content Platform Anywhere (HCPA) lets users share data, while the IT department can keep keep close tabs on where it is and who can access it, the company said. Behind this is a new Hitachi Content Platform, along with Hitachi Cloud Services, which is also available through a third-party reseller/partner programme.

Hitachi case?

HCPA is “the industry’s first integrated file sync and share solution that is built, sold and supported for the enterprise entirely by a single vendor.” according to Peter Sjoberg, CTO of HDS in EMEA.

“File sharing is a fundamental part of how we all work,” said Sjoberg at the London launch. Like Dropbox, or other cloud services, HCPA  allowed him to upload photos – but  “we can show exactly where it is and who has access.”

However, to gain the trust of enterprises and government, HDS will have to provide assurances about where the data is held. Asked by TechWeekEurope about HDS’s plans for a local data centre in the UK and other European countries, Johannes Kunz (pictured), EMEA vice president for file and content, promised Hitachi would have local data centres, but they would arrive through partnerships with ISVs and customers.

“Maybe the laws are changing, but today people would like to keep their data within the country,” said Kunz. “We are working closely with a lot of system integrators to allow this.” In the Asia-Pacific region, HDS goes through partners who sell HDS services alongside their own, he said. “The system integrator is selling his cloud services, and our cloud services, on our behalf.”

For larger organisations, HDS aims to acquire infrastructure from its customers. “Big customers are looking for managed services. What we do in this case is to go in and buy the whole storage infrastructure of the customer, take it out and deliver storage on a a pay-per-use model,” he said.

“We can do this because we have storage virtualisation and can migrate.” HDS plans to bring this model to Europe, starting with the Netherlands, and expects to ramp up in multiple countries quickly, he said. “We have a list of countries and think we can roll out across Europe within three months,” Kunz said, mentioning the UK, Switzerland, Germany and Spain for this service, which is aimed at smaller businesses, who need storage for backup and applications like Exchange. 

In the long term, some of this acquired infrastructure could become shared-use, since it is at big service providers’ data centres. This all sounds somewhat theoretical, but has already happened in Germany he said – though he wouldn’t say what customer was involved.

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