14
Mar

Hitachi distributed two press releases last week pertaining to new capabilities of their storage offerings; both releases discussed federated search as a strategic part of the offerings.

The giant storage and storage services vendor sees a competitive advantage in facilitating the search and retrieval of unstructured data that customers store on its devices. Hitachi has extended its digital archiving system, Content Archive Platform, to quickly search structured and unstructured data distributed throughout the enterprise. And, Hitachi has introduced new file and content services that simplify the management of data across network attached storage and content archives.

The first press release, Hitachi Enables Organizations to Gain Control of Rogue Data with All New Storage Services, quotes FAST CEO John Lervik, whose company is partnering with Hitachi to provide federated search capabilities:

“Specifically, Hitachi Data Discovery Suite provides federated search across many file storage instances, simplified HSM functions, and assistance in understanding discovery risks with storing files across a continuum of platforms. It is one thing to do this in a tightly controlled environment; however, in a complicated world of controlling rogue data this task is daunting at best. Hitachi Data Discovery Suite allows both end users and ISVs to control the broad problem of unmanaged unstructured data.”

The press release refers to federated search a second time:

Unlike competitors that force customers and partners to haggle with disparate and closed storage infrastructures, the Hitachi Data Discovery Suite performs federated search across the Hitachi High-performance NAS Platform and the Hitachi Content Archive Platform, and can extend these capabilities to ISV partners or custom applications.

The second Hitachi press release, Hitachi Builds on Success in Content Services with Enhancements to Content Archive Platform, makes this reference to federated search:

As the growth of unstructured data including email, video and web content and office documents continues to skyrocket and new regulations require quick access to archived data, advanced, federated search capabilities across this disparate content is becoming increasingly important. New full-text search enhancements in the Hitachi Content Archive Platform deliver role-based access to search results and a logging of search activities, making it easier and faster to find unstructured, archived files. Working with the all-new Hitachi Data Discovery Suite (see separate press release also announced today), customers and partners are able to conduct federated search services across the Hitachi Content Archive Platform and Hitachi High-performance NAS Platforms—simplifying eDiscovery and data management.

Data mining meets storage. This only makes sense. Just as the number of web-sites is growing exponentially, creating greater demand for effective and efficient search solutions, the volume of storage in corporate intranets is also growing out of control, prompting vendors like Hitachi to take notice and provide ever more effective ways to manage the unmanageable content. Perhaps Michael Hay, senior director, Product Strategy, Hitachi Data Systems, says it best:

“The unprecedented partner and customer demand that we have experienced for the Hitachi Content Archive Platform is a direct reflection of the surge in unstructured data and the increasing need for high performance, massively scalable storage solutions that are capable of finding the equivalent of a needle in a haystack in record time… Despite the exponential growth in data across all industries, businesses today are expected to transform both structured and unstructured data spread across their enterprise into business intelligence and actionable information upon a single request.”

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 11:13 am and is filed under industry news, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or TrackBack URI from your own site.

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