Skip to main content

Hitachi

Information contained in this news release is current as of the date of the press announcement, but may be subject to change without prior notice.

January 11, 2012

Hitachi to Launch WAN Accelerator Family
for Dramatically Faster Data Transfer Among Global Offices

- 15 times faster than conventional TCP/IP
in United States-Japanfile-transfer experiment -

[image]A Hitachi WAN Accelerator

Tokyo, January 11, 2012 - Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT/TSE:6501) today announced that it has unveiled a WAN Accelerator Family for global data centers, and for enterprises with global R&D, design, and manufacturing operations. The initial model goes on sale worldwide from January 12, 2012.

Hitachi WAN Accelerator Family speeds up international transfers of large volumes of graphical design data and the like - by minimizing the performance impact of packet losses and round-trip delays on global Wide Area Networks (WANs). It makes it possible in less time to share and update large volumes of data necessary for global operations. Thus it improves the productivity of global banks and manufacturers, for example in the automobile, steel and semiconductor industries.

There is an increasing demand for transferring large volumes of data, for example for CAD (Computer-Aided Design) and other areas, among overseas offices. However, the commonly-used conventional TCP/IP protocol is not efficient over long-distance global links - its throughput is severely impacted by round-trip delay and packet losses. Commonly-used content-cache technologies also waste bandwidth when delivering large volumes of frequently-updated data, and therefore are not effectively improving performance.

The Hitachi WAN Accelerator Family is not a cache-type solution, and instead makes best use of the physical bandwidth of communication channels, reducing the time to access data updates, and thus improving productivity of global companies significantly.

Leading global companies are thus highly motivated to use such reliable high-speed communication technologies to accelerate large-data transfers, or to expand their private-enterprise cloud services worldwide.

Highlights of Hitachi WAN Accelerator Family

(1)Efficiency improvements for long-distance data transmission

By using an innovative Hitachi algorithm for performance improvement, the products minimize performance degradation associated with long round-trip times and packet loss over global channels, and improve the throughput of TCP sessions.*1

*1
This throughput accelerator family currently supports bandwidths of up to 100Mbps per TCP session.

Relationship between physical distance and acceleration ratio (theoretical *2)

[Fig.]Acceleration ratio(compared with conventional TCP)

*2
Even higher acceleration ratio is achievable under certain data transfer conditions.

(2)Monitoring and dynamic control of bandwidth

Hitachi WAN Accelerator Family measures packet loss ratio in real time, estimates the available bandwidth, and optimizes data transfer speed on a real-time basis. To realize high-speed data communication, it makes most of the physical channel bandwidth.

(3)Easy installation without major changes in existing systems

The Hitachi WAN Accelerator Family can be installed at both ends of circuits in the existing systems, without changing network design or client terminal and server applications.

Joint Research for High-Speed Communication with Honda R&D Co., Ltd.

(1)Background

From June 2009, Honda R&D Co., Ltd., Hitachi, and Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation ("Hitachi High-Tech") have jointly researched technologies to significantly improve the data transfer speed over WANs. Honda R&D Co., Ltd. initially started its research on global high-speed data exchange to improve its productivity. Hitachi decided to join the research to meet the needs of the automotive industry. The results of the joint research have been implemented into the products.

(2)WAN Acceleration Measurements

a. Experimental result of tests between Japan and the United States sites
In February 2011, Honda R&D Co., Ltd., Hitachi and Hitachi High-Tech confirmed the effects of the acceleration in tests using a prototype system between Honda R&D Co., Ltd. sites in Japan and the United States. The result of the acceleration was 15 times faster than the conventional TCP protocol (transmission time was reduced to one fifteenth) for 100MB file transfers via standard FTP protocol.
b. Experimental result of tests between two Japanese sites
In December 2011, Honda R&D Co., Ltd., Hitachi, and Hitachi High-Tech observed performance which was about four times faster than conventional TCP protocol in tests using a product sample between two Honda R&D Co., Ltd. Japan sites.

Hitachi starts to sell the Hitachi WAN Accelerator Family in Japan, the United States, and Europe. Hitachi plans to promote the business globally by expanding the sales area (outside these initial three regions) in the future, and is committed to enhancing the products in response to new requirements of customers and markets. And Hitachi continues to contribute to big data solutions in enterprises worldwide by providing higher-speed data-transfer technologies that are particularly important in cloud services.

On February 28 and 29, 2012, Hitachi WAN Accelerator Family is to be exhibited at Cloud Days Tokyo 2012.

Hitachi WAN Accelerator Deployment

The following figure shows an example of the deployment of Hitachi WAN Accelerator Family in an enterprise cloud service to realize fast data transfer among R&D, design, and manufacturing sites, and to realize fast data backup service in distributed data centers.

[Fig.]Hitachi WAN Accelerator Deployment

About the Hitachi WAN Accelerator Family

International model
Product Model Outline Price Delivery
Hitachi WAN Accelerator 2 slot model
  1. SMC*3: 1 slot
  2. Network interface: 1 slot
  3. Redundancy: power supply
  4. Type of network interface:
    10/100/1000BASE-T
    1000BASE-X
Quotation
base
Apr 1
2012*4

(Subject to change without notice)

*3
SMC (Service Module Card) is a WAN Accelerator function module with 1Gbps acceleration capacity.
*4
Initial sales areas are U.S. and European countries. (Sales schedule for other areas is to be determined.)

About Hitachi WAN Accelerator Family information Sites

Sales offices

Japan:

Hitachi, Ltd., Information & Telecommunication Systems Company
Network Systems Solutions Division, Network Systems Solutions Operations
Tel: +81-44-549-2541(dial-in) (Suzuki)

EU:

Hitachi High-Technologies Europe GmbH
Europark Fichtenhain A12, 47807 Krefeld Germany
Tel: +49 2151 64 35 200 (Katayama)

U.S.:

Hitachi High-Technologies America, Inc.
10N. Martingale Road, Suite 500, Schaumburg, IL 60173-2295
Tel: +1 847 273 4141 (Michael L. Levans)

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT / TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 360,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2010 (ended March 31, 2011) consolidated revenues totaled 9,315 billion yen ($112.2 billion). Hitachi will focus more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes information and telecommunication systems, power systems, environmental, industrial and transportation systems, and social and urban systems, as well as the sophisticated materials and key devices that support them. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.

Download Adobe Reader
PDF files are in Adobe's Portable Document Format. To view them you need Adobe® Reader® by Adobe Systems Incorporated.