HDS Enhanced TrueNorth Partner Program

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation announced enhancements to the Hitachi TrueNorth Partner Program that help drive increased market opportunity, flexibility, expertise and business growth potential for the company’s partners.

The centerpiece of the enhancements is a new Specialization Program that enables qualified partners to plan, architect, implement and offer customers value-added services solutions with leading-edge HDS technologies. Together with expanded training and new marketing program development capabilities, the Specialization Program enables partners to grow their business and provide higher levels of customer satisfaction.

"The enhancements we’ve made to the Hitachi TrueNorth Partner Program demonstrate our continued investment and commitment to enabling the success of our partners by expanding their market reach and profitability potential," said Mike Walkey, senior vice president, Global Partners and Alliances, Hitachi Data Systems. "Our goal is to empower our partners to develop new avenues for growth through joint go-to-market strategies and customized program plans that maximize their sales opportunities."

Hitachi TrueNorth Specialization Program
Qualified participants in the Hitachi TrueNorth Partner Program can now leverage a combination of specializations to provide customized services and solutions to their customers in the areas of:

• Virtualization Services Specialization – builds partners’ knowledge and capabilities in solving customers’ virtualization implementation challenges of any size. Enables partners to better utilize Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP), the industry’s leading storage virtualization platform, to extend their customers’ existing storage assets and provide significant cost savings.
• Migration Services Specialization – prepares partners to engage in migration planning and implementation by leveraging the virtualization and tiering capabilities of Hitachi VSP. Only HDS migration solutions allow for migration at the storage level between heterogeneous storage subsystems. With certification, partners can plan and design a solution that migrates their customers’ data.
• File and Content Services Specialization – enables partners to identify, design and implement storage solutions for their customers’ unstructured data. Certified partners can add services in Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) enablement, NAS enablement and data discovery with Hitachi Data Discovery Suite (HDDS).
• Application Specialization and Vertical Solutions – leveraging the Services Specializations and HDS reference architectures that have been tested and proven in HDS labs, partners can add their own components to deliver differentiated, low risk and flexible application and vertical solutions to customers. These solutions combine the company’s best practices with Hitachi Technology Alliance Program applications including Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Symantec and VMware among others, to give partners in industries like health and life sciences, government, and communications, media and entertainment a range of potential solutions for diverse customer environments.

"As IT environments continue to become increasingly more complex, customers are looking for their primary solution provider to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of services to help them better architect, implement and manage IT resources," said Hicham Abdessamad, senior vice president, Global Services, Hitachi Data Systems. "Adding specific specializations and new vertical market solutions to the Hitachi TrueNorth Partner Program gives our partners greater levels of flexibility to offer custom and advanced services that will significantly expand their trusted advisor status with customers."

In addition to the Specialization Program,
the Hitachi TrueNorth Partner Program now includes:

• Expanded lower cost training, including an enhanced TrueNorth Scholarship Program for qualified partners.
• Help desk, call center and expanded PartnerXchange technical support with an access portal to download software, firmware and manuals.
• New marketing program development tools such as the Global Marketing Bureau, a web content syndication and lead generation campaign creation tool within PartnerXchange, and a new solutions center information structure to enhance the overall partner experience and drive partner sales.

"Hitachi Data Systems leads the market in its ability to integrate full VMware VAAI support to provide a robust storage infrastructure for virtual server environments. The Application Specialization offered as part of the Hitachi TrueNorth Specialization Program enables us to deploy AMS 2000 with VAAI more easily and thus demonstrate valuable integration to our customers. This provides a great opportunity for us to strengthen our customer advisory role with leading technology solutions," said Steen Balle, Business Unit Manager, Arrow ECS Denmark.

"Hitachi Data Systems is renowned for its storage virtualization technologies. By combining these technologies with Datalink virtualization optimization services, customers will maximize the overall business value of virtual data centers. Overall, the opportunity to deliver innovative solutions in this area as a certified specialist will help us extend our market reach and add greater value to our customers," said Suzanne Becker Gallagher, senior vice president, Marketing, Datalink.

"The Hitachi TrueNorth Specialization Program complements our virtualization practices and strategy with both VMware and Citrix. We look forward to leveraging the performance-based solutions from HDS to help our customers implement new virtualization strategies," said Tony Balistrieri, vice president, Vendor Strategy, FusionStorm.

Read also (in French):
TrueNorth Channel Partner Program de HDS
Pour ses partenaires de la région EMEA