AWS Case Study: Hitachi Systems

The mobile service employs proprietary technology to deliver text based information and video services within a predetermined service locale. This service can be used on commercially available cellular phones equipped with 1seg technology (digital TV service in Japan) when located within the service area of the popular Shibuya area to find out what is happening in this thriving district. This service was already started in January, 2010 in collaboration with Its Communications, Inc. and Tokyu Agency, Inc. Localized and highly specialized content can be viewed and received within a 200m radius of a broadcast antenna(s), roughly equivalent to the size of a football stadium. By its very nature, this service is data intensive, and generates approximately 8 to 10 terabytes of data per broadcast area. Management of these storage needs is posed a challenge.

To enable the desired storage capacity, Hitachi Systems would purchase storage arrays to hold large amounts of data, and set-up these storage devices within their data centers. Like many companies investing money in storage infrastructure, Hitachi Systems would deal with a rather long and complex procurement process. In a nutshell, this meant going through a lengthy justification process with management, trying to select the most appropriate storage array, and undergoing several iterations of price negotiations. Once selected, Hitachi Systems would have to arrange for delivery and setup of those storage devices at their regional data centers. Weeks, if not months would be lost trying to coordinate all these activities.

Unlike the traditional storage procurement process, Amazon S3 offered a simple, cost-effective, and fast storage solution that attracted Hitachi Systems to further pursue. By replacing their current process of buying storage with a pay-as-you-go model offered by Amazon S3, Hitachi has eliminated this capital expenditure from the equation. Not only that, the “speed of system deployment and roll-out is improved greatly, reducing storage resource related time to minutes,” For this project alone, according to Hiroshi Saijo, General Manager of the Platform Solution Division at Hitachi Systems, “Associated with the costs of procurement, placement, and operation within a data center, we estimate cost savings of $70,000.”

Apart from being a cost effective storage solution, Amazon S3 has offered a high degree of scalability Hitachi Systems can easily leverage to quickly prototype solutions. Unlike before, novel and unique systems can now be released via rapid prototypes created at early stages of their implementation lifecycle. Being able to reduce the time to market has enabled Hitachi Systems to not only be a pioneer of the Mobile Broadcast Service market, but also gain a significant competitive advantage. A clear testament of this value proposition is the 6 weeks it took for Hitachi Systems to create and deploy their content management solution.

While cost and time to market has been two key differentiators for Hitachi Systems’ selection of Amazon S3 over an in-house solution, the reliability of the Amazon S3 infrastructure is second to none. For example, the ability of Amazon S3 to automatically replicate data across multiple devices and data centers gives companies like Hitachi Systems the confidence in using cloud storage. Data stored in Amazon S3 is inherently redundant and durable. These kinds of benefits, ensures “high performance and reliability” across their data deployment.

By enabling accessibility to a world class cloud computing infrastructure at a low cost, AWS has enabled Hitachi Systems to growth and succeed in new and existing markets. With AWS as the backbone infrastructure, companies can expand locally targeted services tailored to global wide services. Saijo explains, “Using AWS, traditional systems integrators, like Hitachi Systems, can become service providers without the need for heavy investment in platform required infrastructure. I think this an effective way for us to extend our existing business opportunities and that AWS is there to back up the market challenges that we face.”

For additional information, regarding this case study, please visit our web page http://www.hitachi-system.co.jp/press/2010/pr100218.html (only in Japanese) or send an email to: aws_sas@hitachi-system.co.jp.