Data storage company Hitachi Data Systems, the California-based unit of Japan's Hitachi Ltd, is expanding its cloud product portfolio with the introduction of cloud-ready connectivity appliances and services in a drive to tap the burgeoning cloud market.
Marut Manistitya, Hitachi Data Systems' managing director for Thailand and Myanmar, says more Thai companies are choosing the hybrid cloud to increase the scale and flexibility of their computing power.
Global research firm IDC projects global public cloud-based services will reach US$15 billion by 2017 from a total cloud market worth $107 billion.
"The adoption of cloud-based services has gained momentum among organisations thanks to a growing mobile worker population that pushed companies to use cloud computing technology to handle surging mobile data traffic," said Marut Manistitya, Hitachi Data Systems' managing director for Thailand and Myanmar.
He acknowledged that many enterprises remain concerned about security and availability issues with the use of public cloud. Large enterprises prefer to build their own private cloud infrastructure for security reasons.
Mr Marut said deployments of a hybrid cloud or blended model could help enterprises reduce ICT investment costs and deliver greater performance and lower operating costs compared with private cloud deployments. Hybrid also provides greater data security than public cloud.
He said more enterprises in Thailand are choosing the hybrid cloud as the optimal way to increase the scale and flexibility of their computing power.
To accommodate the surge in demand, Hitachi is introducing its Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) that combines object storage software with a cloud storage gateway. HCP enables users with their own private clouds to extend their connectivity to other external public cloud providers.
HCP can automatically apply data retention and disposal and allows greater control of unstructured data, he said. Target customers are telecom companies, financial institutes, industrial manufacturers and the government.
"We expect the new cloud-ready products and services to increase our revenue by 5-10% this year," said Mr Marut.
Still, storage products remain a cash cow for Hitachi, generating half of total revenue, followed by server and computing products.