Hitachi Accelerates Customers’ Hybrid Cloud Initiatives with Enhanced Hitachi Unified Compute Platform Offerings

New Hitachi UCP RS Offering Integrates VMware Cloud Foundation to Simplify Hybrid Cloud Journey

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501) and VMware Global Innovation OEM Partner of the Year, today announced Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) RS series, a fully integrated, software-defined data center (SDDC) rack-scale platform, powered by VMware Cloud Foundation™. Hitachi UCP RS enables customers to embrace hybrid cloud for faster time to market and pay-as-you-go economics. It also gives customers the freedom to optimize their IT investments by leveraging private and public cloud as an agile extension to their business. UCP RS provides flexibility to customers to either deploy integrated SDDC stack or build their own using Hitachi’s vSAN ready node and VMware software.

Alongside the launch of Hitachi UCP RS, the company has enhanced its hyperconverged system Unified Compute Platform (UCP) HC. Hitachi UCP HC all-flash and hybrid systems are now enabled with non-volatile memory (NVMe) and new sixth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors to deliver faster performance and reduced operating costs, maximizing business value for customers. This enhancement allows for higher performance, lower latency and accelerated workloads through the use of modern data center technology.

John Gilmartin, vice president and general manager, Integrated Systems, VMware said, “Hitachi’s strong track record of innovation led them to be recognized as VMware Global Innovation OEM Partner of the Year at VMware Partner Leadership Summit 2017. This new Hitachi UCP RS solution powered by VMware Cloud Foundation is no exception. The solution improves productivity, delivers faster time to business value and accelerates the customer’s ability to realize the true power of their data.”

“Open questions exist regarding the extent to which advances in SDI technology can support a common virtual data center foundation upon which improved end-to-end IT service interoperability, resilience, elasticity and agility across a hybrid cloud infrastructure can be effectively realized,” according to Market Trends: Software-Defined Infrastructure — Who Can Benefit? (Gartner, June 2017). In addition, the report states that, “Given the current state of public cloud service deployment and the maturity state of SDI, one of two options is possible: The first is an application-independent, common virtual data center infrastructure that can run atop an existing private data center infrastructure, a public cloud service or a combination of the two. This variation is called infrastructure-upward.”

Understanding the new demands placed on IT by data center modernization initiatives, Hitachi has collaborated with VMware to develop the fully integrated, turnkey Hitachi UCP RS system to deliver reliable IT infrastructure for hybrid cloud deployments. Hitachi UCP RS also helps to minimize the complexity and guesswork of deploying and managing IT by uniquely automating provisioning, managing and monitoring for SDDCs, giving customers a competitive advantage, and delivering faster time to market and high availability of business applications.

“Our deep, collaborative partnership with VMware has led to the creation of powerful systems and innovative solutions that help our customers modernize their IT environments and put data at the center of their business,” said Bob Madaio, vice president of Integrated Solution Marketing at Hitachi. “With the launch of our UCP RS in addition to advancements in our hyperconverged UCP HC, Hitachi is empowering our customers to transform their IT environments, accelerate hybrid cloud deployments and further their digital business initatives.”

Hitachi UCP Portfolio
The UCP family of converged, hyperconverged and rack-scale systems provides enterprise, departmental and cloud service provider environments with a simple path to IT modernization and digital transformation. UCP solutions enable IT organizations to accelerate time to production, automate operations and reduce administrative costs by providing prevalidated, pretested and factory-built converged and hyperconverged infrastructure systems.

Product Availability
Hitachi UCP RS is generally available to customers and partners now in all regions. For more information, visit www.hds.com/en-us/products-solutions/converged-infrastructure/unified-compute-platform-rs.html.

Lazada Philippines Hosts Online Marketing Solutions Event on How Brands Can Win on Ecommerce

Last August 10, Lazada Philippines held its first Marketing Solutions Workshop at F1 Hotel in BGC. Entitled How to Win on Ecommerce, the objective of the event was to showcase various tools and technologies that, when applied to a company’s digital marketing strategy, can propel an online business to success. The event was well-attended by Lazada’s brand partners including Disney, Canon, Casio, JBL, Pedigree, FitBit, and Bench.

Lazada Chief Marketing Officer, Tristan de Belloy, talks about Lazada as a marketing platform for brands

Reputable names in the ecommerce industry spearheaded the different online marketing solutions sessions. Lazada Philippines Co-Founder and CEO, Inanc Balci, briefly explained the local ecommerce landscape which brands must understand to thrive in the online retail space. His session was then followed by a keynote presentation by Lazada Philippines Chief Marketing Officer, Tristan de Belloy, who emphasized that Lazada is not only a selling destination for brands but is also an efficient marketing platform on its own. De Belloy expounded on the new tools developed by Lazada such as brand traffic performance reports, sponsored product ads, and its live streaming capacity via Lazada Social TV - all of which brands could use to improve sales.



Google Country Head, Ken Lingan, mentions that the new generation of Filipino netizens are mobile first

Country Head of Google Philippines, Kenneth Lingan, shared his thoughts on winning in a mobile-first market as the accessibility and demand for smartphones is rising fast. The last session was led by Ash Mandyhan, Philippine Lead for Client Solutions of Facebook, who shared how brands need to rethink the way they use social media.



Ash Mandyhan, Philippine Lead for Client Solutions of Facebook, shares that screen shopping is the new window shopping

The Marketing Solutions Workshop was an overall success, with brand representatives taking home key insights and learnings on how to sharpen their digital marketing strategies. In sharing its expertise on online business, Lazada Philippines strives to contribute to the overall growth and success of the local e-commerce industry.

Clarification: Sec. Tugade's Driver's License Application Only For Demonstratio

This is to clarify the issue regarding the issuance of a driver’s license card to Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade during the rollout of the plastic cards with 5-year validity yesterday, Aug. 30, 2017 at the LTO main office in Quezon City.

Foremost, Secretary Tugade applied for a driver’s license card for DEMONSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY.

Secretary Tugade only wanted to test how fast the new system is in renewing/applying for a driver’s license, from encoding of the driver’s data into the system up to the printing of license cards.

In fact, he was clear in saying that he intentionally placed errors in the application form, which demonstrates that his purpose was not to get a license but to see and check if the system is efficient, and see for himself how long an encoder rectifies such a mistake.

Please also note that after the demonstration, Secretary Tugade instructed LTO Chief Edgar Galvante to immediately erase his data in the system and cancel the license issued to him.

After the demonstration, Secretary Tugade likewise recommended to the LTO chief to study how to minimize human (manual) intervention on the part of LTO personnel in the processing of driver's license application so as to minimize, if not eliminate, "fixing" and corruption.

We hope this clears any confusion.

Thank you.