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January 14, 2014

Defence Housing Australia Selects Hitachi Data Systems for Infrastructure Refresh

Single Management for Multiple Storage Tiers Delivers Storage Economics

SYDNEY — January 22, 2014 — Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), today announced that it has been selected by Defence Housing Australia (DHA) to design and implement an infrastructure that efficiently leverages all storage tiers for optimised systems performance and delivers long-term data lifecycle management and cost benefits.

DHA provides quality housing and related services to members and families of the Australian Defence Force. With a total portfolio of more than 18,000 properties, it contributes to the mobility of Defence families and enhances the recruitment and retention of highly-trained personnel.

DHA’s head office in Canberra provides operational, financial, information technology, human resources, communications and corporate support to staff located in 19 Housing Management Centres (HMCs) and regional offices throughout Australia. The move from its ageing onsite data centre to a modern colocation facility presented DHA with an opportunity to upgrade its infrastructure to cater for the high demand, high performance IT environment that powers the organisation’s service delivery. After a careful review of market options, DHA decided to replace its legacy Hitachi hardware with Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) 130 together with Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning and Hitachi Dynamic Tiering software.

The HUS platform deploys storage for all data types to meet DHA’s backup and archiving requirements and easily grows to meet expanding requirements and service level objectives for critical business applications. Hitachi Dynamic Tiering helps improve the performance of databases stored in the file system by keeping the highly referenced data, such as control tables and indexes on solid state drives (SSD), while moving less frequently referenced pages to a lower, more cost-effective tier of storage.

“We chose Hitachi Data Systems because we know that we don’t have to worry about the infrastructure, today or in the future. Hitachi understand our capacity needs and delivers constant innovation with its products,” Shane Nielsen, Chief Information Officer and General Manager, Business Solutions & Technology at Defence Housing Australia, says. “Hitachi’s dynamic tiering approach allows us to embrace flash technology for hot workloads while giving us the peace of mind of having a reliable, scalable and cost effective storage infrastructure for our long-term data storage, management and retention requirements.”

Hitachi Data Systems did not just simplify DHA’s infrastructure refresh with the built-in auto tiering and data migration capabilities of its unified storage solution. The project was also supported by its Global Solution Services (GSS) team managing the implementation in the new data centre and decommissioning of the old infrastructure

“Hitachi has the trust factor. With their strong project management skills and deep product expertise the GSS team helped us with the migration to the new data centre,” Nielsen adds.

Neil Evans, country manager and vice president, Hitachi Data Systems Australia and New Zealand, says: “As more organisations consider flash technologies for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), database acceleration or to consolidate virtual machines (VM), they want to make sure systems and applications get the right data at the right time. Defence Housing Australia demonstrates how the right infrastructure management strategy can optimise the value from SSD in a multi-tier environment.”

About Hitachi Data Systems

Hitachi Data Systems provides information technologies, services and solutions that help companies improve IT costs and agility, and innovate with information to make a difference in the world. Our customers gain compelling return on investment (ROI), unmatched return on assets (ROA), and demonstrable business impact. With approximately 6,300 employees worldwide, Hitachi Data Systems does business in more than 100 countries and regions. Our products, services and solutions are trusted by the world's leading enterprises, including more than 70% of the Fortune 100 and more than 80% of the Fortune Global 100. Visit us at www.hds.com/anz/.

About Hitachi Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, delivers innovations that answer society's challenges with our talented team and proven experience in global markets. The company's consolidated revenues for fiscal 2013 (ended March 31, 2014) totaled 9,616 billion yen ($93.4 billion). Hitachi is focusing more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes infrastructure systems, information & telecommunication systems, power systems, construction machinery, high functional materials & components, automotive systems, healthcare and others. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at www.hitachi.com.

Press Contacts:

Hitachi Data Systems
Isabel Wagner
(+61) 2 9325 3365
isabel.wagner@hds.com

DC Communications
Scott Mckenzie
(+61) 433 144 731
scott@dc-comms.com