SolidFire Operations in Japan Headed by Yoshikazu Okada

SolidFire, Inc. has opened office in Tokyo, Japan, headed by IT industry veteran Yoshikazu Okada.

In addition, the company announced a distribution agreement in Japan with ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation, Tokyo, Japan.

These two announcements follow SolidFire’s recent expansion in Australia, establishment of the company’s regional HQs in Singapore, and completion of a distribution agreement with Nissho Electronics Corporation, highlighting SolidFire’s rapid growth across AsiaPac and demand from Japanese enterprises for adaptable, flash-based storage solutions.

The company is seeing an increasing number of Japanese corporations adopting all-flash infrastructures to fuel their OpenStack and VMware-based cloud infrastructures. SolidFire’s agreement with ITOCHU Techno-Solutions means that more Japanese enterprises will have access to its scale-out flash architecture.

“These announcements mark our full-scale debut in Japan’s dynamic IT market,” commented SolidFire founder and CEO, Dave Wright. “Large enterprises and top service providers in Japan are demanding levels of performance and workload consolidation that only SolidFire’s all-flash scale-out storage platform can deliver. I am happy to welcome Yoshikazu Okada, a proven IT professional, to lead our local operations and to welcome ITOCHU Techno-Solutions into our regional network of distribution partners.“

Japan country manager Okada added: “Japanese enterprises with data and services in the cloud can now leverage scale-out all flash storage to raise the efficiency and expandability of their data centers without making major new hardware investments. With its industry-leading flash array solutions, SolidFire is in a prime position to help these domestic companies meet and surpass their performance goals in the cloud. I look forward to helping make this a reality for more and more Japanese customers.“

GM of telecommunication systems planning division, ITOCHU Techno-Solutions, Shun Ando, commented: “We welcome the launch of SolidFire in Japan. The IT infrastructure market is rapidly evolving with migration of innovative functionalities in the cloud through vertical and horizontal integration. Modern enterprises require multi-tenancy, eco-partner integration, solutions for optimization and automation, high scale-out capability and robust platforms for non-stop services. We will work with SolidFire, the dominant player in cloud storage, to enable high-grade cloud solutions with the strongest technical expertise for Japanese customers.“

The announcements include:

• Launch of SolidFire’s Element X Program, which enables hyper-scale enterprise and service provider customers to combine the software of SolidFire’s storage platform with their own hardware.
• Expansion of the SF Series product line with the introduction of the SF9605, which delivers 34.5TB capacity and 50,000 predictable IO/s at the lowest $/GB cost within the portfolio.
• SolidFire’s new FlashForward Program delivers platform compatibility and unlimited drive wear guarantees designed to assure customers that their flash investments will continue to scale and remain current as new flash geometries, performance and price points enter the market.
• Closing out 2014 with an average 50% increase in sequential quarterly bookings, while SolidFire’s Enterprise customer bookings grew 570% over the previous year.