Hitachi Data Systems, provider of Application Optimized Storage™ solutions and wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), today announced that the Association of Storage Networking Professionals (ASNP) and InfoStor Magazine awarded the revolutionary Hitachi TagmaStore® Universal Storage Platform the 2006 Most Valuable Product (MVP) Award for best Disk Subsystem for the second consecutive year.

Originally introduced in September 2004, and continuously upgraded, the Hitachi TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform created an entirely new paradigm of business-enabling storage technologies for the industry, and continues to change the way companies think about and approach information management across the enterprise. The TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform offers unique capabilities far beyond typical enterprise-class storage systems by powering an embedded virtualization layer capable of managing up to 32 petabytes of internal and external storage, logical partitions for the creation of secure Private Virtual Storage Machines, and sophisticated storage-agnostic remote copy that greatly simplifies business continuity, driving continued marketshare gains that have positioned Hitachi at the forefront of storage virtualization.

InfoStor Magazine is a leading monthly publication dedicated to providing more than 50,000 IT storage managers and professionals with the right decision-making information to evaluate, specify, integrate and manage enterprise storage products and technologies.

“InfoStor congratulates Hitachi Data Systems on winning the MVP Award for the second consecutive time in the Disk Subsystem category,” said Dave Simpson, editor-in-chief, InfoStor. “These awards are unique in that end users—both InfoStor's readers and members of the ASNP—voted to determine the winners based on their own criteria.”

“Our customers across the globe are realizing the economic benefits of optimally managing and moving data seamlessly across different tiers of storage and simplifying storage management,” said Hubert Yoshida, chief technology officer, Hitachi Data Systems. “That’s because Hitachi is the only company that has effectively unlocked intelligent storage controllers from disk media, providing customers with the flexibility to optimize their applications with whichever levels of performance, scalability, capacity, and cost they choose, while still enjoying the availability and functionality of a tier one TagmaStore intelligent storage controller. With positive industry response, such as this prestigious recognition from InfoStor and the ASNP, we will continue to invest in and enhance the world's leading universal storage services platform.”

The MVP Awards program recognizes the "best of the best" of storage networking products in the industry, as determined exclusively by storage end-users. ASNP and InfoStor Magazine selected winners in the following seven categories: compliance and retention, storage management software, backup hardware, networking equipment, disk subsystems, data protection software, and most innovative products.