Hitachi Content Platform: End-to-End Portfolio for the 3rd Platform

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1 TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT Hitachi Content Platform: End-to-End Portfolio for the 3rd Platform Amita Potnis IDC OPINION Businesses are undergoing a fundamental transformation as they actively adopt the four pillars of the 3rd Platform (social, mobile, cloud, and big data). Social media, Web 2.0, hyperscale environments, and a mobile workforce are all a part of modern business activity. Being an integral part of the business strategy, enterprise IT is challenged with defining how storage technologies are consumed and adopted to fulfill needs and utilize the potential of the 3rd Platform workloads and trends. One of the distinguishing factors about most businesses today is that workforces are largely mobile and more often than not decentralized. Through mobile and social networks, businesses are able to satisfy customer needs. Modern-day workforces use a variety of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. While mobility enables businesses to be more productive through deeper collaboration and faster time to market, it also complicates matters for IT organizations. And it's not the only challenge faced by IT. Rampant data growth, for example, is a consequence of such technologies and, in turn, a major concern for most IT organizations. Users expect the same level of ubiquitous access to data, no matter which device they use to access it. In essence, enterprise IT is also undergoing a significant transformation. Businesses are looking to adopt technologies that will augment existing infrastructure and workloads while supporting the requirements of the 3rd Platform. In detail: As businesses grapple with the storage demands of the 3rd Platform, object-based storage (OBS) solutions are proving to be the right choice to maintain the balance of scale, costs, and complexity. Today, OBS solutions are extending well beyond the traditional archival use case to efficiently enable the requirements of the 3rd Platform. OBS solutions cater to many use cases, such as content delivery, sync and share, analytics, archival, and backup. April 2016, IDC #US

2 IN THIS STUDY This Technology Assessment seeks to give its readers a better understanding of Hitachi's objectbased storage product portfolio and how it can serve the demands of the 3rd Platform. SITUATION OVERVIEW A steady transformation is taking place in enterprise IT. In an increasingly digital world, many companies are now struggling with the consequences of unprecedented data growth owed to a mobile workforce and increased social activity. Many businesses have to store data for an extended period of time, in some cases perpetually, because of compliance reasons or simply to mine the data to discover better business opportunities. In addition, the proliferation of the 3rd Platform goes hand in hand with growth of next-generation applications (NGAs), and enterprise IT has to have the flexibility and agility to serve both NGAs and current-generation applications (CGAs). NGAs are changing the design and delivery of IT infrastructure. The critical question for any business is when, what, and how to implement the right technology when preparing for this transformation: When. The time for adopting 3rd Platform technologies is now. By doing so, traditional businesses can ensure long-term sustainability and increased profitability. Those businesses that do not do so will lag behind and eventually perish. What. Understand what technologies will support 3rd Platform (NGAs) as well as 2nd Platform (CGAs) requirements. Some of the key attributes of infrastructure for the 3rd Platform are linearly scaling performance and/or capacity, use of shared-nothing architectures, and specific data management features, such as consistency, availability, and key-value stores for caching and persistence (e.g., ObjectStore) while making no assumptions on infrastructure resiliency. How. Analyze how a potential technology will serve NGAs and CGAs. Depending upon the size of the company and specific workload needs, businesses could use public cloud or onpremises private cloud infrastructure. Flash storage, georesiliency, and XaaS can be used, depending upon the requirements of the workload. There are a few storage suppliers that have a robust solution to integrate the requirements of the new and existing applications. Hitachi Data Systems' (HDS') object-based storage solution, Hitachi Content Platform (HCP), combined with Hitachi Data Ingestor (HDI) and Hitachi Anywhere, brings to market a robust solution that meets the demands of the 3rd Platform while maintaining the requirements of existing applications. OBS Serving the 3rd Platform As businesses move toward petabyte-scale data storage in the 3rd Platform, OBS solutions quickly become a viable and prudent choice. But what is object-based storage? OBS employs a flat tenant-account-container-object namespace designed for multipetabyte environments. OBS solutions use flat structures to organize data. Such structures are higher-level structures in which data is often organized using an "account, container, and object" approach wherein "objects" are analogous to "files" in FBS solutions. Accounts, containers, and objects are referenced by a metadata repository that stores and manages attributes of data stored in that structure. The level at which OBS solutions operate varies from platform to platform. Many OBS solutions operate on a per-object level (i.e., allow each object to be treated independently as far as policy management is concerned), whereas others operate at a container or account level 2016 IDC #US

3 (i.e., only allow policies to be applied at a container or account level). Several OBS solutions also leverage NoSQL databases as metadata repositories and persistent data stores (instead of storing chunks in the file systems). The idea of worrying less about IT infrastructure but more about what the data reveals is gaining traction. In general, OBS solutions offer the right balance of scale, complexity, and costs. By way of their core design principles, OBS solutions deliver high scale at reduced complexity and reduced costs over the long term. Many OBS solutions of today match or exceed scale-out file-based platforms in performance that allows not only efficient file ingestion but also retrieval concurrently across multiple sites. In many cases, OBS suppliers have enhanced their offerings such that data can be tiered to and retrieved from public cloud offerings (also based on OBS), thus offering added flexibility for end users. In addition, some workloads cannot afford compute and data to reside separately. Several OBS platforms offer or are considering offering non-storage workloads to run natively on the OBS platform, for example, analytics workloads. Since most OBS platforms are node based and use x86 platforms, they offer workload adjacency for distributed and localizable workloads like MapReduce and hypervisors. In the very beginning, OBS solutions were designed to solve long-term data retention and archival problems. Today, they have expanded well beyond the traditional use case to extend their capabilities to 3rd Platform requirements. Company Overview Hitachi Data Systems is an experienced and leading vendor of storage solutions and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. HDS offers a full-service portfolio of storage and integrated (compute, storage, and networking) infrastructure software and services solutions. According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, Hitachi is among the top 5 storage suppliers of enterprise storage systems worldwide. HDS entered the object-based storage market in 2007 through the acquisition of Archivas and then relaunched it as Hitachi Content Platform. HDS has integrated the Archivas IP into its other offerings, resulting in a tightly integrated portfolio approach. HDS has strengthened its portfolio though several strategic acquisitions as well as internal development in support of HCP and other products. Hitachi Content Platform Solution In 2014, HDS launched a corporate social innovation strategy geared toward the 3rd Platform that encompasses all of its products, particularly HCP. IDC believes HDS' HCP-related product development efforts, announcements, and focus on content mobility represents one of boldest strategies of the company yet. HDS strategically offers support for the right data, at the right time, and the right place through a tightly integrated HCP offering that can be used to build private, hybrid, or public clouds. Today, the HCP solution gets to the heart of what many customers are looking to accomplish in the areas of hybrid cloud and workforce mobility while retaining visibility and control over their digital assets. The HCP solution is a combination of the following three products: Hitachi Content Platform is an object-based storage solution that enables enterprises to be driven by business demands. HCP offers capabilities to both cloud service providers and enterprise IT to store, share, collaborate, analyze, protect, retrieve, and preserve data in a single system IDC #US

4 HCP-AW is a secure, enterprise-grade, file sync-and-share solution. Recent enhancements to the HCP-AW platform enable users to go beyond file sync and share to allow users mobile access to existing NAS devices and enhanced data protection tools for end-user files. HCP- AW enables seamless and secure access to data anywhere and anytime. Hitachi Data Ingestor can be used as a cloud NAS gateway to HCP-based cloud environments or as a bottomless, backup-free file-serving solution for distributed, remote, or branch offices. HDI makes on-ramping easier for businesses that have not yet recoded their applications to connect to HCP via the REST API or doubles up the HCP platform as a corporate NAS solution for user home directories. HDS HCP: Object-Based Storage Solution HCP is designed to address the demands for scalable data storage, security, and agility to adjust to the changing nature of business. HCP is a distributed object storage solution that supports enterprises and service providers to manage a single system in a simple and efficient manner. The core of HCP is the OBS software that HDS delivers either as software running on virtual machines or as an appliance complete with choices for primary storage (on-premises private cloud) and compatibility with public cloud. The following are some key features of the HCP solution: It enables policy-based data movement between private on-premises and public clouds such as Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Storage, and Hitachi Cloud Services with metadata capabilities stored onsite. It allows its users to retain full control and visibility over their data. It facilitates improved performance and availability for collaboration via geo-distribution. User experience is enhanced by making data available from the closest HCP. It supports traditional protocols such as NFS and CIFS along with HTTP/REST and Amazon S3. It is compatible with the OpenStack Swift API and can be used as a drop-in replacement for Swift. It offers many data protection options that include erasure coding (EC) and replication. It has been tested to support 1,000 tenants, 10,000 namespaces, and 10,000 users. HDS strives to continually enhance the HCP object storage offering through focused development and innovation. HDS' latest efforts focus on adding cloud features and capabilities to better position HCP as a cloud storage platform. Over the past year, in its bid to establish a distinct lead in the OBS space, HDS made many product enhancements to HCP. Key enhancements include: HCP Access node G series nodes. These nodes virtualize and federate back-end capacity sourced HCP Storage Nodes (S-nodes), block, file, or object (public and private) devices. All user and application data passes through Access nodes. HCP Access nodes perform the service and management functions and can be optionally enlisted to hold object data using internal server disks and SSDs. HCP Storage node S series nodes. These Ethernet-attached storage nodes (S-nodes) provide erasure code protected storage pools that are managed by Access nodes. These appliances allow the HCP to scale storage capacity independently from its compute capacity. This highly dense, lower-cost capacity tier enables end users to reduce TCO by moving data away from expensive primary storage such as Fibre Channel IDC #US

5 Enhanced management HCP v7.2. These capabilities extend support to both the S-nodes and G-nodes. On the hardware side, HDS categorizes the HCP node offerings into two categories, which are explained in the sections that follow. Access Storage Nodes Hitachi has made the platform more ubiquitous and scalable, with multitenancy, active-active replication, and support for cloud protocols like Amazon S3 as well as traditional storage standards like NFS and SMB/CIFS. HDS also recently added the ability to tier data from HCP to common public cloud services such as those provided by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft's Azure as well as its own Hitachi Cloud Services to enable hybrid cloud architectures. Further: HCP G10 is built using a commodity server that supports up to 12 hard disk drives (4TB each) and RAID 6 in a 2U chassis with 2 x 6-core CPUs. Using solely G10, HCP can scale up to 80 nodes with 2.2PB of internal storage. HCP Virtual Machine (VM) supports VMDK and RDM on user-supplied hardware, scaling up to 40 nodes with 4.7PB of internal storage. Economy Storage Nodes Recognizing the tighter budgets of today's businesses, Hitachi recently introduced a new underlying hardware called S-nodes that supports erasure coding. These S-nodes are based on commodity components and are offered in two flavors: S10 contains up to in. hard disk drives (6TB each), yielding 360TB of storage in a 4U enclosure, connected via 10Gb Ethernet. S30 contains up to in. hard disk drives (6TB each), yielding 5.7PB of storage, spread across two racks and connected via 10Gb Ethernet. These Ethernet-attached nodes function as shared storage resources, which enable HCP to scale storage capacity independently from its compute capacity. Eighty S-nodes would provide a single HCP cluster with 497PB of capacity. They can be combined with HCP G10 or HCP-VM. This new and extensive range of underlying hardware is designed to cater to storage environments' varied needs, offering businesses a choice of delivery models (appliance versus virtual machine) and density/performance. Extended Storage With adaptive cloud tiering (ACT) technology, HCP Access nodes can leverage storage from thirdparty sources to provide greater elasticity and cost management. ACT makes it possible to construct hybrid HCP configurations that share resources between public and private clouds. HDS claims that this technology allows a business to easily integrate public cloud capacity and align allegiances toward the one solution offering the best long-term storage rates or best reliability. This breadth of simultaneous use cases allows HCP to be used as a private, public, and hybrid cloud storage platform; as an archive for stringent corporate data security and governance oversight; and a big data repository and even combinations of all these. For example, it can be used as a secure cloud repository, a compliant archive, and a file sync-and-share solution, all without creating silos. Currently, HCP's primary use cases include file sync and share, big data storage, data protection, backup, and archival. HCP also serves the cloud service provider market (e.g., Verizon Cloud) IDC #US

6 FUTURE OUTLOOK HDS has done an impressive job of integrating HCP into its industry-leading portfolio through continued development efforts. The company astutely recognized new opportunities and has created a unique ecosystem of offerings that supports requirements of the 3rd Platform. By way of HCP's tightly integrated solution ecosystem that includes HCP Anywhere, Hitachi Data Ingestor, and Hitachi Cloud Services for Content Archiving, HDS has demonstrated the ability to deliver suitable on-ramping and/or purpose-built capabilities for its solutions that leverage a single management interface. HCP thus provides unique resource and management efficiencies for customers. Recent HDS acquisitions like Pentaho (business analytics software) target the development of existing and emerging markets, such as Internet of Things (IoT), analytics, and the social innovation solutions portfolio. This reaffirms HDS' commitment to HCP, making it an attractive and flexible OBS solution something that few vendors can stake claim to. ESSENTIAL GUIDANCE IDC expects that HCP will continue to face aggressive competition from commercial and open source variants, presenting HDS with a challenge for penetrating these markets and a continued opportunity to expand its footprint within its existing enterprise customer base while identifying greenfield enterprise opportunities. In the OBS market that is dominated by several vendors and service providers, HDS needs to demonstrate that it is looking at this market differently and not just as another route to fulfilling revenue targets for other storage products. As a software-based storage solution, HDS has the opportunity to position HCP as a "hardware free" platform, and, as a result, the opportunity to expand its reach beyond its traditional customer base. Hitachi's vertical focus puts the company in a unique position to create integrated systems that extend beyond network, compute, and storage, embracing 3rd Platform solutions and building strategic engagements with customers that can encompass the entire stack of vertical solutions and applications. HDS is in a unique position to expand market share and drive growth globally. LEARN MORE Related Research Telco Giant Telefónica Deploys Caringo for Cloud Storage (IDC #256226, May 2015) NAB 2015 Showcases a Significant Mindset Shift Towards the Cloud, New Storage Strategies to Cope with Data (IDC #255772, April 2015) Data Storage Innovation Conference Highlights (IDC #255624, April 2015) Archival Strategies in Media and Entertainment: A Special Study (IDC #254651, April 2015) IDC's Worldwide File- and Object-Based Storage Taxonomy, 2015 (IDC #254078, February 2015) Content Delivery Strategies in Media and Entertainment: A Special Study (IDC #253923, December 2014) Postproduction Storage Strategies in Media and Entertainment: A Special Study (IDC #253275, December 2014) NetApp Exemplifying Commercial Success with OpenStack (IDC #253105, December 2014) 2016 IDC #US

7 Worldwide File- and Object-Based Storage Forecast (IDC #251626, October 2014) Leading European Broadcaster Deploys MatrixStore from Object Matrix as Nearline Storage for Postproduction Video Content (IDC #249808, August 2014) Synopsis This IDC study seeks to give its readers a better understanding of Hitachi's object-based storage product portfolio and how it can serve the demands of the 3rd Platform. "As organizations enter multipetabyte-scale data environments, they will need to adopt object-based storage architectures that offer agility, scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness for data at scale," said Amita Potnis, research manager, file and object-based storage solutions. "Hitachi's object-based storage solution, HCP, along with Hitachi Data Ingestor and HCP Anywhere, offers the convenience of an integrated solution that many organizations will prefer." 2016 IDC #US

8 About IDC International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make factbased decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,100 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries worldwide. For 50 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company. Global Headquarters 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA USA idc-community.com Copyright Notice This IDC research document was published as part of an IDC continuous intelligence service, providing written research, analyst interactions, telebriefings, and conferences. Visit to learn more about IDC subscription and consulting services. To view a list of IDC offices worldwide, visit Please contact the IDC Hotline at , ext (or ) or sales@idc.com for information on applying the price of this document toward the purchase of an IDC service or for information on additional copies or Web rights. Copyright 2016 IDC. Reproduction is forbidden unless authorized. All rights reserved.