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- Values and future direction of Fujitsu ETERNUS storage systems: Storplex 2008
Values and future direction of Fujitsu ETERNUS storage systems: Storplex 2008
Leading storage solutions development for a new era
The role of storage has changed significantly from the 20th to the 21st century, and has grown to become core IT infrastructure supporting corporate management. Fujitsu, in focusing on the increasing importance of storage, is proposing new storage systems that include applications and middleware rather than any single component. Fujitsu's new storage concept, Storplex 2008, is therefore being developed to resolve such changes in operational requirements.
A 21st century storage system concept: Storplex 2008
Just as a Cineplex provides a variety of movies in one building, Fujitsu's Storplex aims to deliver integrated solutions to customers with a focus on the different requirements of each operation. The concept of Storplex 2008 presents a path to such optimal applications and is based on high-level storage technologies Fujitsu has developed over the past 10 years. These include: "Flexible connectivity", "Dynamic scalability", "Continuous data access", and "Enterprise storage management". Behind this concept creation are the following storage environment changes of recent years:
| Storage environment changes | Background |
|---|---|
| Globalization of business activities | Globalization of business activities continues to accelerate with advances in, and deregulation of the internet. In order to ensure smooth business continuity day and night, IT infrastructure must also provide continuous stable operation 24 hours a day. |
| Increasing corporate social responsibilities | Healthy corporate management, based on laws and regulations, is necessary for stable company growth. At the same time security enforcement is also essential. Systems free from information leaks, whether by external data access or internal malicious activity, must be established. |
| Worsening environmental problems | With the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol beginning in 2008, companies must seriously tackle environmental concerns. IT infrastructure is significantly related to global warming. |
| Explosive increases in data volumes | Though nothing new, the amount of data keeps increasing. New measures are required that consider cost reductions and efficiency of operation. |
| Increases in "unstructured" data | Previously, only structured data that was held in storage and managed by database systems. Now, unstructured data such as business documents, mail, PDF files, images, audio and video files, has been increasing rapidly. |
Key areas of Storplex
"Storplex 2008" focuses on five key areas in response to the listed changes surrounding business organizations and storage environments, plus finding solutions to new problems. They are: "Business continuity", "Security and compliance", "Lifecycle management", "Information sharing and retrieval" and "Green products". Fujitsu will continue to provide storage systems that match with these five key areas on an on-demand basis.
- Business continuity
Storage systems are part of the fundamental IT infrastructure for business continuity. They must store and provide "information"as a crucial management resource at all times. ETERNUS enables business continuity from the standpoints of "data protection" and "data disaster recovery". - Security and compliance
Security is guaranteed through secure storage management, data encryption and encryption key management. In terms of compliance, access via a dedicated API and falsification prevention functions protect contents. - Lifecycle management
Fujitsu helps customers make effective investments in storage through the placement and movement of data between suitable storage media. This is keyed to the value of the information as it changes during the various stages of its lifecycle. - Information sharing and retrieval
Integration of scattered file servers using file virtualization functions enables information sharing and improved data retrieval. Further, parallelization functions which use multi-cloning and enables the sharing of widely dispersed files, enable high-speed full-text searching of unstructured data. - Green products
Through the development and use of storage products with reduced effect on the environment, Fujitsu is contributing to reductions in environmental burdens. Fujitsu's green products also prevent wasteful power consumption through effective storage use and promote energy conservation.
Fujitsu will provide overarching resolutions for customers' storage requirements based on the new key areas described above. Please refer to "Storplex 2008 Whitepaper" to find out more about Storplex 2008.
