HP set to challenge EMC, Hitachi in storage market
Hewlett-Packard Korea Storage Enterprise Group Director Lee Kyung-keun introduces new storage system products during a press conference at the Westin Chosun Hotel in central Seoul, Tuesday. / Courtesy of Hewlett-Packard Korea
By Yoon Sung-won
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Korea said Tuesday it will push for an all-flash server storage system business to outperform other venders including the market leader EMC.
“In the storage system market, we are competing with EMC, Hitachi, IBM, NetApp and Pure. But we have confidence with our all-flash array products and their viability for major Korean enterprise customers such as banks,” HP Korea Storage Enterprise Group Director Lee Kyung-keun said during a press conference in central Seoul, Tuesday.
“We have achieved some 300 percent growth in the domestic market last year. We pushed ahead with the all-flash storage system business four to five years ago to develop high-performance and cost-efficient products.”
According to data from market research agency IDC, HP held about a 9.8 percent share in the storage system market here in the first quarter, following EMC with 37.4 percent and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) with 21.2 percent. HP outperformed NetApp and International Business Machines in year-on-year growth, the data showed.
The size of the nation’s storage system market reached 110.7 billion won in the first quarter, up 23 percent from a year ago. The growth has created more market opportunities for companies seeking more profit from the expensive all-flash server storage systems.
On Tuesday, the company launched the new HP 3PAR StoreServe 8000 midrange series and 20000 high-end series server storage products which have higher processing capability, more flexibility, expandability and security, aiming at enterprise customers in Korea.
Lee stressed that the introduction of the much faster flash storage systems using solid-state drives as well as the hardware improvements in the midrange segment, the product portfolio is no longer categorized by performance but by other elements such as expandability and cost efficiency.
The HP 3PAR StoreService 2000 series includes high-end all-flash array products that surpass all those of other venders in performance as it supports up to 3.2 million input-output operations per second under a low 1-microsecond latency environment. It accommodates up to 15-petabyte usable capacity in a system, Lee said. One petabyte is equal to 1,024 terabytes.
He also said the system is designed to be highly converged and energy efficient.
“We have focused on all-flash and hyper converged storage systems and our 3PAR StoreServe systems are starting to outpace our competitors,” HP Asia Pacific and Japan Storage Division Vice President Phillip Davis said.
“The all-flash segment has shown the fastest growth speed in the entire storage system market and our growth speed was about eight times faster than that.”