• Tech & Trends

Growing Pains and Constricted Budgets Challenge Midsize Enterprises

By Patricia Harris

Managing IT infrastructure challenges such as shrinking budgets, workforce shortages and data availability issues can give midsize enterprises never-ending headaches. Which is true even under “normal” conditions. I think we can all agree these are not “normal” conditions. The task has become significantly more complicated with a rapid increase in remote work, increased demand on system performance, and exponential growth in data quantity and complexity.

Budget constraints often run headfirst into reality, requiring aggressive solutions. Data volumes are forecast to rise to 23%1, thanks to increasing data traffic from cloud computing applications, mobile applications and new technology such as AI and IoT, while data storage budgets are only growing 10%2 on average. That math tells a tough story.

Another issue facing organizations is dwindling staff. According to the Uptime Institute, the data center industry is facing a staffing shortage and an aging workforce.3 This means less staff to grow your business. Data availability is another challenge as a loss of uptime can cost thousands, if not millions, of lost revenue along with a damaged reputation.

We understand that if your digital infrastructure isn’t part of your overarching business strategy there will undoubtably be issues and maybe significant consequences. The bottom line is, without a solid approach to your digital infrastructure, your other IT goals can’t be met, and you could potentially be putting the fundamentals of your business at risk.

Hitachi Vantara recently released the groundbreaking Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) E990 with Hitachi Ops Center for our midsize-enterprise customers. The Hitachi VSP E990, an all-NVMe option, rounds out our line of VSP models and takes advantage of powerful management tools used by our Hitachi VSP 5000 series, the world’s fastest data /storage array. Not only it is an amazing addition to our line of storage options, it is significantly better in performance and reliability than our competitors…even with their newly released solutions which tout new seamless transition options (which Hitachi Vantara customers have enjoyed for years) and makes availability claims that aren’t backed by a guarantee.

Hitachi Vantara offers a 100% data availability guarantee to safeguard your data and your reputation. Our competitors promote storage platforms as being designed for 99.9999% (six 9’s) with the footnote disclaimer “Actual System Availability may vary.” Unlike the Hitachi VSP E990, the competitor’s platform does not deliver key business continuity or any high availability features required by midrange customers, the competitor’s product offers asynchronous replication only. Most companies of any size could not afford the loss of 5 minutes worth of data – ever, making the competitor’s product a risky proposition for customers. The bottom line is we believe organizations of every size deserve the same type of availability and reliability in their digital infrastructure. You shouldn’t be forced to settle for less.

The Hitachi VSP E990 reduces manual storage provisioning tasks by up to 90%, freeing up personnel to focus on delivering maximum ROI. Our competitors do not have this capability, instead, as you add more storage and CPU, you also have to add more cabling and more complexity, requiring more management. In fact, at least five different and unique management systems are required for the full breadth of storage management tasks with one of our competitor’s newly released product set.

The Hitachi VSP E990 with Hitachi Ops Center can manage that flood of data with an industry-leading 4:1 data de-duplication, reduction twice that of Hitachi’s closest competitor, freeing up to 75% of storage capacity4, guaranteed.

The Hitachi VSP E990 solves the challenges that enterprises of all sizes, including midrange companies, face including budget constraints, staffing shortages, flexibility and complexity issues, data availability and risk reduction with a guaranteed solution that relies on Hitachi’s proven products. Unfortunately for our competitors, their solutions don’t come close.

When comparing storage systems, the choice for midsize-enterprise customers is clear. Want to check it out for yourself? Visit our website to learn more about Hitachi Vantara midsize storage solutions.

  1. 451 Research, S&P Global Market Intelligence: “Voice of The Enterprise: Storage, Organizational Dynamics 2019”
  2. 451 Research, S&P Global Market Intelligence: “Voice of The Enterprise: Storage, Budgets and Outlook 2020”
  3. https://journal.uptimeinstitute.com/the-data-center-staffing-and-skills-shortage-is-here-now/
  4. Based on Hitachi Vantara internal testing and/or industry-standard benchmarks against published claims of competitive products

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