Hitachi Debuts Storage Technology Solutions
Cover Story
By Hanna Aronovich   
Monday, 14 November 2005
smc The expertise and resources of two leading technology companies are the backing behind one San Jose, Calif.-based organization. Founded in 2003, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was formed when IBM joined with Hitachi Ltd.’s storage technology businesses.
The expertise and resources of two leading technology companies are the backing behind one San Jose, Calif.-based organization. Founded in 2003, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was formed when IBM joined with Hitachi Ltd.’s storage technology businesses.
The expertise and resources of two leading technology companies are the backing behind one San Jose, Calif.-based organization. Founded in 2003, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was formed when IBM joined with Hitachi Ltd.’s storage technology businesses. Storage is one of Hitachi’s core businesses, and the company says its vision is to “enable users to fully engage in the digital lifestyle by providing access to large amounts of storage capacity in formats suitable for the office, on the road and in the home.”

COO Bob Holleran says IBM and Hitachi each brought strengths and expertise to the new organization. “IBM created the industry with their invention of the disk drive in 1956, and Hitachi joined only 11 years later with their first disk drive product in 1967,” he recounts. “Since that time, the two companies each introduced new cutting-edge technologies and pushed recording densities to new heights.”

Hitachi and IBM’s long-standing R&D departments have both been heavily involved in hard disk drive technology, Holleran continues. The global manufacturing models of both companies allowed the components and hard drive manufacturing activities to be vertically integrated.

Bringing together IBM and Hitachi’s complementary product lines “created a company that provides a complete product portfolio to serve the traditional IT and fast-emerging consumer electronics segments of the hard disk drive industry,” Holleran explains.

When Hitachi GST was formed, Hitachi held 70 percent and IBM the remaining 30 percent. Holleran says the intention was that Hitachi would gradually acquire the entire company by the end of 2005. “IBM’s involvement has always been purely financial,” he notes. “There are no shared resources. However, IBM continues to be an important customer of Hitachi, especially in the area of 3.5-inch Ultrastar drives for server applications. Additionally, we supply Lenovo, which now owns IBM’s PC business, with 3.5-inch ATA Deskstar drives for desktop computers and 2.5-inch Travelstar drives for laptops.”

Hitachi GST maintains a global vertical integration manufacturing model, which enables the company to better control the quality and supply of its components and drives, Holleran explains. Internal production is augmented by strategic partners who supply “additional heads and media as our volumes require,” he says. “This two-pronged strategy gives us the best of both worlds: access to additional components as needed while ensuring that our internal production capability is competitive with that of the industry.”

Hitachi GST holds the largest patent portfolio in the disk drive industry, Holleran says. He credits this success to the R&D heritage and disk drive expertise of the company’s founders. Hitachi GST continues to draw on its parent company, Hitachi, for partnership opportunities on R&D-related projects.

“Hitachi GST recently partnered with Hitachi Metals for a new technology called Extra Sensory Protection [ESP],” Holleran points out. “ESP acts like a type of drop sensor for the hard disk drive and can detect a fall in as short as four inches. If a fall is sensed, the hard drive controller suspends the read or write operation and parks the head safely away from the surface of the disk, preventing the potential loss of data. The technology was made possible due to the miniature drop sensor developed by Hitachi Metals.”

Hitachi GST recently launched two products that Holleran says address the growing needs of the consumer electronics industry. The Microdrive 3K8 is a one-inch embedded hard dive with 8GB of capacity and is 20 percent smaller than the standard 1-inch Microdrive. Also downsized, the 1.8-inch Travelstar drive is 30 percent smaller than the original. “These new Hitachi drives represent a novel approach to the hard drive industry’s continuing quest for high capacity in smaller and smaller form factors,” Holleran notes.

The company continues to make investments in manufacturing, especially in Asia-Pacific. In 2004, Hitachi GST broke ground on a $500 million manufacturing facility in China.

Hitachi GST plans to continue pursuing innovation to remain an industry leader in small-form factor, as well as further penetrate the consumer electronics market.

“We are expecting healthy growth for 2006 while remaining the second-largest revenue-generating hard disk drive company,” Holleran says. “With substantial and dedicated research and development investments, Hitachi GST is positioned to inspire and lead the future of storage technologies.”
 
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