Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Reviews

Our main use case for this product is for our core banking database, specifically for storing the data.

The most useful features of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for our storage needs are the redundancy and the security.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is scalable, reliable, and secure, impacting our infrastructure positively in terms of scalability.

The replication technology that Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform uses is quite older, and the replication methodology they employ for data between the data center and the production and standby database shows no significant improvement in that particular field.

With respect to storage administration, I'd like to see more clarity on the encryption side; data being stored in an encrypted manner is essential, but the customer or end-user doesn't understand which encryption is being used and doesn't have a direct view stating that their data is encrypted using AES 256 or DES, or whatever standard they follow. This lack of transparency may not be acceptable during audits.

I have been working with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for the past eight years.

Compared to the peers, I find the setup of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform to be a bit complex; if I am a user only using Hitachi, I do not find it complex, but having experience with main competitors in the same industry makes me feel it is a bit complex. The time taken for the initial configuration and provisioning takes a minimum of three to four working days once the product is on your premises, which is not the case with other OEMs where you can finish the entire work in half a day.

If we are running on a standalone infrastructure, I would rate Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform a 10 for stability, but if it has multi-site replication in place, there will be a slight deviation and it would go to an 8.

Regarding technical support for Hitachi, hardware servicing, such as routine hard disk failures, is handled effectively. However, for software support, particularly concerning replication, the service is not up to the mark when we need to escalate issues to teams such as the L3 team in Australia.

The time taken to act upon issues is quite large, and issue identification takes a significant amount of time, especially when it comes to critical problems. The dump collection process lasts for almost three to four hours, which isn't permissible for such critical systems, causing delays in resolution. Even for smaller issues, this deterioration in the support process complicates matters.

Neutral

When comparing the setup of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, it is clear that Pure Storage makes the installation process and the day in which the installation completes and the storage is ready for provisioning minimal compared to any other vendor.

The cost of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is reasonable compared to competitors, but it is dependent on the customer; I cannot say for the entire industry, but for us, it's comparable.

There could be operational issues, but with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, there are no major issues; operational issues are something that occurs with anything you use. Nothing in the world is perfect, and if something is perfect, I believe it is not humanly made.

Currently, below 10 users, specifically those are the storage administrators, work with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform on a day-to-day basis.

I recommend that those planning to use Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform should know that it is an enterprise-class solution; whether it's a single instance or multi-instance, it remains reliable and scalable. However, if there are large data changes in the production environment, it's always best to implement software-level replication rather than relying solely on Hitachi's storage-wise replication.

I rate Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform a nine out of ten.

We are a partner with Hitachi, offering our customers a range of storage solutions, from midrange to enterprise, including products like VSP e590 and VSP e790. Additionally, we have recommended the VSP 5600 and VSP 5200 series to certain customers. All of these VSPs are deployed on-premises.

Our customers utilize the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform in their production environments, and several major banks in Pakistan employ this storage solution for their banking production software.

We don't encounter any challenges in selling these Hitachi VSPs to our customers. These products boast an exceptionally robust architecture, making them highly reliable. This reliability is the key reason behind our lack of challenges. However, when we delve into the realm of competition, particularly in the unified storage sector, we do face certain challenges. This is primarily due to the usage of gateways in their storage solutions by some competitors. Unlike other competitors such as NetApp and Huawei, who do not employ gateways, we contend with challenges related to these gateways within the context of unified products.

Many customers have been utilizing Hitachi Vantara for several years, relying on its storage capabilities. They appreciate its reliable roadmaps, which facilitate long-term planning. This makes it an effortless choice for customers to opt for Hitachi Vantara, as the product seamlessly accommodates updates and future changes.

The key focal point of the Hitachi Vantara roadmap for our clients is centered around future upgrades. Typically, customers undergo tech refresh cycles approximately every five years. Consequently, when they embark on a tech refresh initiative, they tend to prioritize options that facilitate a smooth transition of data to alternative storage solutions. In this context, Hitachi Vantara leverages its external storage virtualization platform to ensure a seamless data migration process. This approach proves to be highly advantageous for our customers, and it stands as a primary reason for their choice to engage with Hitachi Vantara's offerings.

Our customers are highly satisfied with their choice to acquire Hitachi products and services. I have not observed any of our customers shifting away from the Hitachi brand.

I would recommend Hitachi Vantara 100 percent of the time to others.

There are tools that assist us in accessing the IOPS per second and latencies of Hitachi Vantara systems. One such tool is the CPK tool, accessible through the Hitachi Vantara portal. Whenever we configure a product and a customer requests information about the IOPS and latencies, we can provide them with a report from the portal. This report includes details about reads, writes, IOPS, and sequential operations, offering a comprehensive overview of the IOPS performance that Hitachi Vantara offers.

The combination of low latency and high performance has consistently assisted customers in improving their production and enhancing their working experience. It also aids them in easily managing the product, giving them time to expand their knowledge and plan for the future, rather than dealing with storage-related issues.

The cost comparison of IOPS between our solutions and those of competitors is favorable at present, but this wasn't always the case. In the Pakistani market, Huawei used to be highly competitive. However, our current partnership with Hitachi has allowed us to pose a strong challenge to Huawei. Additionally, when considering products from NetApp, EMC, and even IBM, Hitachi remains highly competitive.

Hitachi offers flexible media options to support the consolidation of multiple uses within the same platform which is important to our customers. Most of our customers utilize Unified Storage, employing a two-tier storage approach that includes both NVMe and SSDs. However, current trends indicate a shift in customer preferences towards NVMe over SAAS or SSDs due to the heightened reliability and increased cost-effectiveness of NVMe technology. This transition is driving many customers to adopt a comprehensive NVMe solution. Nonetheless, a substantial number of large customers still adhere to the two-tier storage model. For their primary tier, they employ NVMe drives, while for the secondary tier, they opt for NFS drives or a SAAS-based large-scale service.

The integration of various use cases into a unified platform to facilitate the transformation of data into business insights is highly valuable. We receive input from our customers regarding their workloads. Based on the nature of these workloads and their intended use for storage – whether for ERP solutions, archives, or backup purposes – we recommend the appropriate storage type. These steps outline our process for evaluating the intended storage workload. Following this workload assessment, we suggest either NAS Unified Storage or Document Storage solutions.

In the portal, there is a tool that enables us to calculate Hitachi's guaranteed effective capacity. It is quite straightforward for customers to comprehend and identify the effective capacity ratio. This is because many customers in Pakistan are already familiar with and using effective capacity ratios. Explaining the concept of effective capacity to customers is not a challenging task.

Customers typically appreciate the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform due to its efficiency, easy product manageability, and product reliability, all of which offer significant benefits to the customers. This is crucial, especially in sectors like banking, where any breach or downtime could lead to substantial losses for customers. The uninterrupted operation of storage is paramount. This substantial benefit not only ensures customer satisfaction but also underscores the value derived from data utilization. 

Hitachi's adaptive data reduction technology assists in decreasing our client's storage footprint by around 50 percent. The majority of our customers were using storage from various vendors. We consolidated this storage into a single system using Hitachi Vantara.

The most valuable features are external storage virtualization and the 100 percent data guaranteed availability.

Hitachi should offer a distinct overview of the various storage choices. For instance, the only difference between the e590 and the e790 is the core processor's capacity, which enhances the performance of the e790.

I have been selling the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for 12 years.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is extremely stable. We have a customer that has been using the solution for over 12 years because of its stability.

All our customers utilize Hitachi Virtual Storage Platforms due to their scalability. Even a compact system like the e590 can expand to accommodate petabytes of storage, which is sufficient for their specific needs. The majority of these customers belong to midsize organizations. While there are only a limited number of larger enterprises that have chosen the VSP 5200 or VSP 5600, the majority of customers opt for the e590 or e790 models within their respective environments.

Technical support is the best.

Positive

We are also partners with Dell EMC and NetApp, but since forming a partnership with Hitachi, we predominantly recommend their products to our customers. We still have a small number of customers using NetApp as well, but it's relatively low. We primarily work with Hitachi because of their reliability and sturdiness.

The initial setup is straightforward. There is no complexity in configuring everything. The deployment takes a maximum of one or two days.

We typically receive a scope of work from the customer. Once the scope of work is finalized, we ascertain the specific workloads that will be allocated to this storage and determine the assignments related to this storage product. Once the scope of work is completed, we transition into the deployment phase.

Our customers experience a return on investment when they implement the Hitachi solution into their environment. As a result, their performance and production improve. This is why, even after seven years, they still choose to utilize the solution.

Hitachi VSP's pricing is good compared to other brands. Ultimately, it boils down to a numbers game. The pricing is currently competitive, whereas, in the past, it was not.

I would rate the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform ten out of ten.

We have almost 100 customers that use the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform in our region.

We have 15 people that are certified in the maintenance of the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform across three offices, south, central, and north regions. The maintenance required is minimal.

Our customers maximize the usage of their Hitachi VSPs by storing their production workloads, archives, and backups on these systems. We are planning to increase the number of customers we have. 

I recommend Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform because it is a robust and dependable product that ensures a 100 percent data availability guarantee, thus eliminating any potential concerns for customers.

I work in the financial sector with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, specifically VSP.

We did not need tiering in Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform since we are using all-flash storage.

Regarding Hitachi storage, we are not using data protection on the storage level, with the only protection level being snapshot. We are not using other features, and as I know, Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform does not have many features for data protection.

We are using the disaster recovery capabilities of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, specifically mirroring and data mirroring. The storage functionality for disaster recovery has a very minor impact on our overall disaster recovery functionality since we are using more complex application-level and virtualization-level disaster recovery rather than storage-level disaster recovery.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is faster and more durable compared to competitors, but with less functionality. For example, data encryption options, working with file system protocols, and additional authentication methods and mechanisms could be added. When comparing with competitors or when talking about block-only storages, the functionality is not that bad and is on an average level.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is a great device that is very stable, very durable, and very simple.

The centralized management console in Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is not very comfortable and user-friendly. However, it works fine.

Additional functionality related to data encryption and authentication could improve Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform.

I have been working with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for about two years.

Before Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, I worked with storages from different vendors including EMC, HP, and IBM.

I see additional features related to data encryption and authentication in competitors' products.

Before Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, I worked with storages from different vendors including EMC, HP, and IBM.

At this moment, we are also using a Dell EMC solution in parallel.

When I refer to competitors, I do not mean something like Dell PowerStore because PowerStore is not a competitor as we do not think that PowerStore is a competitor since it uses totally different technology. Additionally, Dell PowerStore has some additional difficulties in management and instability, so PowerStore is not only a block-only storage.

We have already used another solution, so we are not still looking for a new solution.

I am fully satisfied generally.

I work as an end-user and as a presenter for a partner, not as a customer, partner, or reseller of Hitachi and Dell.

I only use storage systems and have not integrated it with other products in my system or used anything other than storage by Hitachi.

I would rate this review an 8.

We utilize both VMware virtual machines and physical machines across different teams. We operate with two thousand servers. In our current setup, we are a serious customer with thirteen Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform systems. We have just recently expanded by purchasing additional big storage.

The active data management of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, especially with the HOPS Center, makes it easier to work with the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform infrastructure. Previously, it was difficult to create and delete LUNs, which would take a long time, but now with HOPS Center, it is functioning correctly. It is now as easy as working with EMC or Dell storage, and the performance is better, especially with new features. The solution's performance, security, and cost are satisfactory. These factors influenced our decision to purchase Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform.

The interface management and monitoring need improvement. Although I receive emails from Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, I find the management aspect not as good as their hardware.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for three years in this bank, and in a previous bank for about five years.

We are able to change and add new features, though we must test and ensure security. Overall, scalability is satisfactory.

Comparatively, EMC offers a better GUI interface and easier server connectivity, but we faced security management issues. This led us to switch to Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for better performance and pricing.

The initial setup was straightforward. Adding new storage, creating new LUNs, and attaching them to a host group was not difficult.

While performance, security, and financial aspects of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform are satisfactory, I am unsure about the exact return on investment. We have invested further by purchasing new storage this month.

I compared Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform to EMC, which offers a better GUI interface.

I would rate Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform nine out of ten. The main area needing improvement is interface management and monitoring.

I use it for data consolidation management tasks, and we'll go through the control apps. I go to the controller to do that.

Moreover, Hitachi VSP streamlined our data access and storage processes. So, it's got NFS and CIFS.  And the CFIS, too, depends on the disk type we put in,  it can format files and data for different protocols like SMB.So it's versatile in its own ways. 

We use it in conjunction with the cloud. So it's multi-tenant, making sure that it is cloud-ready. This is cloud-ready hardware and software. And, the VSPs have the capacity to integrate other third-party software and the engine is very, very powerful.

The deployment could be a bit easier, because it's a bit tricky.

I have been using it for more than a year now. 

When I look at storage, it's about uptime, disaster recovery, and all those things.

So, its reliability has been crucial to our operations. 

I haven't had any issues with the stability of the product.  

Normal issues, as we go through patch management, make sure that we do not install anything without looking at the bug scrubbing and all that stuff, and ensure that we always have a stable platform. Do our research and in the background, talk to Hitachi and not take it just by ourselves.

It's a multi-tenanted model, a monthly tenant, it's not just one organization we're hosting. But depending on the customer, we just bring on a tenant.

It's modular. So I can keep growing. But, again, every modular thing also has its limitations. For example, if I take an E590 series, it can grow so much because the engines can support and handle so much, then you gotta go up to the higher one. 

What I haven't seen is if the E590 is compatible with the next level up, if they are interoperable, or if they have to be treated as a separate cluster. I am not sure about that yet.

The customer service and support are reasonably good. The environment I work in, there always remains an element of surprise, and there are restrictions. 

But Hitachi has good technical people. The customer account manager is good and gets the thing straightaway. 

The setup is in three parts. One is the field setup, with someone coming in to do the initial configuration, which would have an IP address, and work away from it. 

Followed by the Professional Service setup, which is architecture and design. It's a very versatile box, so that setup is very tricky. We have to get it right the first time. 

If you make a mistake and don't design or architect the platform correctly, you're going to have to unwind, which can be done with the help of snapshots. 

With the vCenter, you control these things, and in this case, the controller. And you take a snapshot and put it on another box.

So it could be easier to deploy.

Architecture-wise, it's actually at a competitive price point. It is not cheap. But for the purpose-built, and one thing I've never seen, which is probably an industry thing, is that it's modular to start with, but it has to be the same model and make for it to grow.

Every business is different. Like, when I was using the Dell EMC PowerStore 1000 (not Dell 1000P), the cost analysis for that specific business is different from what I'm doing now. So, it depends on if I'm comparing apples to apples, and in this case, it's not. It's apples to oranges.

We did consider the cost when we were sizing Hitachi against another product. But ultimately, it came down to more than just the price. You need to look at the technology, the engineers available for DevOps support, and what kind of engineers you can find in the market. Are they more familiar with NetApp or Hitachi?

So, while buying the hardware and software itself might not be the most expensive part, the ongoing cost of maintenance and hiring qualified labor can be significant. If you just look at the upfront cost of hardware and software, maybe there are other products that are a bit cheaper. 

But then there might not be enough qualified engineers. And not enough certified engineers for those other products.

If we had to train people and get them up to a higher standard of certification, the time investment for the company or organization would have been much higher. So, from a one-time cost perspective, maybe there were other products that were cheaper upfront. But in this case, considering the ongoing labor costs, Hitachi ended up being a more cost-effective option.

A good part is it is scalable. It's reliable. It is both at all. But it does not work well with BusyBox. Even though it supports multiple vendors, some features do not support multiple tenants; they are not vendor-adopting. 

For example, bring in a NetApp and try to use it with Hitachi. You'll either have limitations with that application or you'll actually always have to do extra patching. Or the other tricky part that needs to happen.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is a data management platform for SAN storage, NAS storage, and object storage. It also provides storage as a service, making it suitable for various segments.

For Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, the most valuable features are its performance, reliability, scalability, data protection, and a hundred percent data availability guarantee. Additionally, it offers storage virtualization with both internal and external options.

Hitachi should work on unified storage for the SMB market and entry-level NAS storage, similar to what HP or Dell offers. Moreover, while they currently provide ransomware protection through immutable snapshots, more integrated data protection features could be beneficial.

I have worked with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for the past three years.

The stability of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is excellent. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform has great scalability. I would rate it a ten out of ten.

Hitachi does not perform well in terms of support. There is latency in part replacement. Resolution time must be faster compared to the competition as customers need quick support for their critical applications.

Neutral

I have moved from Zoom to using Hitachi solutions. I am currently associated with Redington Limited.

For small scenarios with one or two storages, the initial setup is manageable. However, with five to ten storages, management becomes more complex compared to Dell or NetApp.

For NVMe storage, the pricing is reasonable compared to competitors in India. However, for entry-level SAN storage or unified storage, the pricing is relatively high, creating challenges in pitching Hitachi as a product.

Competitors to Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform include HP's primary storage, Electra storages, Dell's PowerStore and PowerMax series, and NetApp's A series. Hitachi competes well in commercials for the NVMe segment, offering no-question-asked data reduction technology.

I recommend Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform to other users.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

I use the solution in my company as it is a good storage product.

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's GUI or interface for storage and management is a little bit difficult compared to Primera and HPE storage products.

I want to see deduplication features in the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform since it is a good storage system. The GUI interface for storage management is a bit difficult.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform since 2015.

I think all storage tools have facilities in them to be able to scale up and down. Scalability-wise, I have no complaints with the solution.

I don't think the product features are available for our company to contact the tool's support team. There was an incident in 2016 and 2017 when both of its controllers failed. It was very strange for me to have a storage in which both the controllers failed. We had to send it across to Japan for investigation, but I haven't received any reply from them yet.

The product's installation phase was not difficult because the vendor or its partner was involved in its setup process.

I have seen some savings in my company from the use of the product, especially since the market is becoming too competitive nowadays. The companies selling storage which are better than mechanical drives.

I find Hitachi to be cheaper by five to ten percent when compared to Dell and HP's costs, but the features in Dell are better than Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform. We have only eight terabytes of storage available on Dell, but we can manage to create partitions of about thirty terabytes, meaning it allows for a lot of compression.

From the data management point of view and for deduplication purposes, Dell storage is the best option. It gives me around a one-is-to-sixteen ratio of compression, while Primera only offers a one-is-to-three ratio. There is no deduplication in Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform because it is an old storage.

The product's performance is good.

The product is reliable.

I rate the solution a seven to eight out of ten.

VSP systems run on our core OS as our storage recovery solutions, including SVOS (Storage Virtual Operating System).

We primarily use it for data stability and various hospital operations, including RMAs, patient responses, faxes, emails, and scheduling tasks.

We use primarily mid-range storage solutions like the VSP G350 or VSP G590.

We use Hitachi VSP for data center consolidation. For VMware, we deploy shared storage solutions with VSP, which supports multiple ports. This aids in data consolidation efforts.

With VSP, we leverage a 3DC architecture, incorporating NDR and FDR for a 100% data availability guarantee. This is especially valuable for our banking customers.

The valuable features for data management include deduplication and compression without performance impact, and the ability to virtualize old storage, making migration seamless.

The main issue is the management software, which requires a separate VM for full functionality. The default web GUI is less capable. 

Unlike Dell or HP where the web GUI is much more capable. The default web GUI in Apache VSP doesn't have all the functionalities, so that's the main disadvantage, perhaps the only one.

In future releases, I would like to see enhancements in the web GUI capabilities for direct management without additional PCM. Secondly, the introduction of dynamic volume management, where volume level rate settings can be defined directly without pre-defining a RAID group.

We have been using it for around ten years.  

So far, it's been very reliable. We haven't had a single instance where we've lost data or experienced platform downtime. 

It's highly stable and available. In fact, according to a Gartner report, it boasts exceptional availability, scalability, and something else related to those aspects.

It's highly scalable.

Whenever we need to add more capacity due to customer demands, it's like plugging in a new DDA or enclosure. It's a seamless experience for the customer.

The customer service and support are satisfactory.

Positive

I have used Dell and VMware.

One key feature is storage utilization. Hitachi VSP can utilize storage from any vendor, unlike Dell or HPE.

For example, if I have old Dell storage that needs migration,  Hitachi can virtualize it seamlessly. Other vendors might require third-party tools for such migrations.

The initial setup was easy. Integration is straightforward, with options for Fibre Channel or iSCSI connections. We typically choose Fibre Channel for its efficiency.

The installation and configuration process took approximately three days. It's fairly easy to maintain. The process is well documented.

There is around 30% to 40% ROI, mainly in terms of managing the money.

The pricing is very competitive compared to other vendors. It really depends on the type of media we're using, like SaaS, SSP, or NVMe.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We use Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform's 5500 series.

Hitachi's support helps us to quickly and effectively resolve any issues we may have.

Hitachi's roadmap is good. They maintain consistent performance levels with each new version and a robust platform. While we don't anticipate significant innovations in storage, the current storage capabilities are commendable.

I am satisfied with the decision to purchase Hitachi products because they provide a storage solution with good performance and quality, which is exactly what we need.

The solution's performance, specifically IOPS, is good. Since we have a complex business, knowing that the system's performance is reliable provides us with peace of mind.

The flexible media option, which helps consolidate multiple use cases within the same platform, is very important because it provides a significant performance boost. 

Storage is the most valuable feature.

The embedded management for installation feature has neither simplified nor complicated the management process, therefore, there is room for improvement.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for over 15 years.

The customer service is good.

Positive

The price is good enough considering the performance, and we are satisfied.

I would rate the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform an eight out of ten.

We have independent consultants who conduct market research for us. On the other hand, when we pay for upgrades or renewals, we typically engage two different vendors in the solution: IBM and another vendor.

Our solution provider is Hitachi itself. They own the technology and provide us with assessments. They are a good partner to work with.

I am likely to recommend Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform to others.

The product is used in our company since we have implemented a proxy server for our organization from Hitachi. With Hitachi, my company has dealt with the planning, implementation, and migration of the products. The migration was done specifically from our company's site. Hitachi provided the planning and implementation plans, and the full implementation process was carried out with the help of Hitachi's partner.

The solution's most valuable feature is that it provides a secure gateway with SSL inspection. The tool also allows our company to control a user's internet access on a time-based or quota-based basis.

The complex setup phase is an area where improvements are needed.

I have been using Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform since 2016.

It is a scalable solution because our company initially implemented it for around 50,000 users, and now we plan to increase the number to around 200,000 users.

My company does plan to increase the use of the solution in the future.

The product's support might have some issues. Hitachi provides on-site support. My company deals with Hitachi's customer support and engineers, as these are the two types of people available for on-site support.

The product's initial setup phase is complex and complicated.

The solution can be deployed in six months because our company needs each and every implementation node and the report required for it. Implementing the tool takes around six months.

For the implementation process, my company first had to have a meeting with Hitachi, after which we were given a plan which was discussed in our organization's internal meeting. My company goes through the two or three types of installation proposals received from Hitachi, and then we finalize it so that the implementation process can be started. A person from Hitachi is physically available on-site during the implementation process.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. In 2016, when my company wanted to implement Forcepoint, we found that it was available only on the on-premises version and not in the cloud.

In our company, we only pay towards the licensing charges associated with Forcepoint, as Hitachi is considered to be a third-party product for us.

Speaking about how the tool streamlined our company's data access and storage processes, I would say that previously, we were using Microsoft Project. Hitachi later approached our company with a proxy solution consisting of software and hardware components, and after having a few meetings, Hitachi explained to us the features and benefits of a proxy solution. Hitachi then took the inputs from our managers and management while taking into consideration areas like how many users would be using it and what other existing solutions are used in the company, after which our company was provided with a proper plan for implementation. For implementation, two people from Hitachi's end were appointed at our location, and they worked with four people from our company.

The product's reliability has been crucial for our company's operations.

Hitachi has been really good since it provides proper documentation, which provides proper information about the solution. Hitachi's support team is also good.

The people provided by Hitachi for on-site support are very experienced and helpful since, knowledge-wise, they are the best.

The cost-effectiveness of the use of the tool in my company stems from the fact that even though there is another product in our company that we use with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform when it comes to Hitachi, the support personnel has deep knowledge to solve any problem on-site.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.