Hitachi Vantara and Model9 enter global partnership to power hybrid cloud

Hitachi Vantara has announced a new global partnership with Model9, a specialist in cloud data management for mainframe, providing greater access, visibility, and value from critical data for enterprises with mainframes as their core business platform.

According to the announcement, this partnership is key for enterprises that utilise hybrid cloud environments. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of Fortune 500 companies host their critical core IT on a mainframe, and a recent report found that as more businesses undertake mainframe modernisation, the most important IT operating factor for businesses was to create a single point of data management across hybrid environments.

However, as mainframe modernisation becomes increasingly more critical to enterprise customers, moving data to the cloud can be difficult and risky.

Businesses have an array of concerns, including securing data in transit, the volume of data involved, the ability to fully access and gain value from that data, and the fear of breaking applications that are functioning well, the company states.

The Hitachi Vantara and Model9 collaboration is focused on enabling enterprises to gain greater data-driven value through the cloud, making mainframe data available and accessible for both cloud applications and predictive analytics services, accelerating business cloud transformation in a low risk, low cost, and fast way.

Bringing additional capabilities to the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series and Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) object storage portfolio, Model9's software connects the mainframe, so customers can transfer current or historical mainframe data, whether stored on disk or tape, without interim disk storage.

Additionally, the technology allows customers to securely unlock mainframe formatted data for use in any private or public cloud.

Mark Ablett, President of Digital Infrastructure, Hitachi Vantara, says, "The dilemma for many organisations is that on-premises data is siloed, and access to legacy data on tape backups is difficult.

"Combining our VSP 5000 series and HCP storage portfolio with Model9's software provides many benefits including protected backup copies, recovering and restoring data quickly and replacing costly virtual tape hardware with affordable cloud storage. This is also a great example of how our strong partner network is able to drive trusted solutions and profitable outcomes for customers."

Gil Peleg, Chief Executive Officer, Model9, comments, "The reality is that mainframe modernisation takes time, and its critical that businesses are able to access and gain value from their mainframe data while undergoing that transition. By leveraging Hitachi Vantara and Model9's collective expertise in secure data governance and management, we provide a unique offering that provides a streamlined approach that enables customers to protect, access, and monetise their data."

Steve White, Program Vice President of Channels and Alliances at IDC, shares a broader perspective saying, "To be successful, a partner program must be a strategic vehicle for both vendors and their partners, allowing them to leverage specific skills and expertise from each side to address market challenges together. This better together direction should enable both to focus on adding value to the mutual customers they serve and support joint business growth as they expand across specific industries and geographical areas."

The Hitachi Vantara VSP 5000 series is a next-generation storage infrastructure designed to provide a modern foundation for digital transformation and data centre modernisation. Supporting block, file, and containerised workloads, VSP is among the highest performing, scalable, and resilient data storage platforms on the market, supporting any workload from open systems to mainframes.

HCP offers a broad ecosystem of solutions including comprehensive, intelligent data management that spans beyond object storage alone to unlock the full value of data assets.

A leader in theGigaOm Radar for Unstructured Data Management Business Solutions and a DCIG Top 5 On-premises SDS Object Storage Solution, Hitachi's HCP portfolio has been rated as exceptional for metadata analytics, big data analytics, and compliance and security. HCP delivers comprehensive data management for IoT, big data, and unstructured data whether it is on premises or in the cloud.

The Model9 patented software solution performs data set backup, full volume dump, aggregate backup, data migration and automatic recall. The software runs simultaneously with data management products and simplifies implementation by allowing some data to be redirected to cloud storage. Hitachi Vantara and Model9 co-sell this joint solution globally.