Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, and a provider of Services Oriented Storage Solutions, has launched 'Switch it On' programme. The programme aims at helping customers derive more efficiency out of their environments by improving the optimization of their storage assets.

As part of the programme, Hitachi Data Systems is offering free storage virtualization software, enabling customers to consolidate all externally attached, third-party storage under common management and optimize with advanced capabilities.

"Programmes that promote storage efficiency are endemic right now and deservedly so. Heterogeneous support and virtualization are extremely valuable approaches both operationally and financially; however with 'Switch it On' Hitachi Data Systems strikes a new and welcome chord - it is not only exposing inefficiency and talking about what it can offer, but is actually helping its customers to do something to address it, without them having to get out their checkbooks," said Mark Peters, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group.  

"This initiative reaffirms our commitment to help customers save money by enabling them to leverage existing assets they own and reclaim under utilized storage capacity. Customers tell us we have the winning strategy because, unlike other storage vendors, our strategy is built upon enabling customers to do more with less and improving on operational and capital expenditures. By leveraging our market leading storage virtualization technology, customers can dynamically thin provision not only internal storage, but external storage as well for nondisruptive data movement, copies, replication, business continuity and migration of thin volumes across externally virtualized storage," said Brian Householder, Senior VP (Worldwide Marketing and Business Development), Hitachi Data Systems.