Hitachi Data Systems Rated "Strong Positive" in Leading Industry Analyst Firm's MarketScope for High-End Enterprise Disk Arrays 2008 Report

According to the report, Gartner advises current customers of vendors with "Strong Positive" ratings to "continue planned investments" and advises potential customers to consider these vendors as "a strong choice for strategic investments."

"We are proud to be recognized in Gartner's MarketScope for High-End Enterprise Disk Arrays report as we believe it demonstrates our continued success in the high-end storage market worldwide and our industry leadership in storage virtualization," said John Mansfield, SVP of Global Solutions Strategy and Development, Hitachi Data Systems. "We believe achieving the highest rating by one of the industry's top analyst firms reflects our core strengths including our ability to execute on an integrated services-oriented storage solutions vision and roadmap that is strategically aligned to the broad needs of our global customers."

In the MarketScope for High-End Enterprise Disk Arrays report, Gartner also notes "the majority of the vendors in our evaluation now support the technologies that Gartner considers must have functionality for the high-end enterprise disk array market, including thin provisioning and tiered storage." The report covered the state of the market and evaluated six high-end enterprise disk array vendors based on the following criteria:

o Marketing strategy

o Product strategy

o Product or service

o Sales execution and pricing

o Market responsiveness and track record

o Customer experience

The Gartner MarketScope for High-End Enterprise Disk Arrays, Sept. 2008 report by April Adams, Roger W. Cox and Stanley Zaffos is available at http://www.hds.com/corporate/press-analyst-center.

MarketScope Disclaimer

The MarketScope is copyrighted 2008 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The MarketScope is an evaluation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the MarketScope, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest rating. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.