Hitachi Data Systems Celebrates Technology and Honors Asia Pacific’s Best at Annual CIO Summit

Over 100 CIOs and industry experts attend the grand finale of the IT Inspiration Awards

Kuala Lumpur, November 6, 2008 — Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT) and the only provider of Services Oriented Storage Solutions, today, announced the local and regional winners of the IT Inspiration Awards at a glittering ceremony at The Shangri – La Mactan Resort and Spa in Cebu, The Philippines. The winners in each of the five award categories were announced in conjunction with Hitachi Data System’s annual Asia Pacific CIO summit which serves as an opportunity for senior IT management from across the region to meet network and learn from each other.

Initiated in August this year, the inaugural Hitachi Data Systems IT Inspiration Awards provided a unique platform for Asia Pacific’s leading enterprises to showcase technology use that drives business forward. The contest was split up into five award categories that received an overwhelming response in the form of nominations from well-known companies across the Asia Pacific. The nominations were also published online and users were invited to vote for their most inspirational deployment – over 3000 votes were received.

“The first-ever Hitachi Data Systems IT Inspiration Awards 2008 is a tribute to the leadership that goes into each piece of technology deployment. While technology is important, it takes companies with the clarity of vision to see storage technology as a change agent for business improvement and not just cheaper capacity. This award program allows us to recognize these leaders and provide an industry platform to exchange best practices around the most relevant areas of storage application. Each nomination is significant as it motivates the industry and IT professionals to scale to greater heights in the future,” said Hubert Yoshida, VP and CTO, Hitachi Data Systems.

“The IT Inspiration awards showcased amazing talent of companies across Asia Pacific. The sharing of best practices will inspire the next generation of technology practitioners to innovate and excel, that will definitely propel the industry in Asia Pacific to acquire a significant competitive edge” said Vernon Turner, Senior Vice President of IDC's Enterprise Infrastructure, IDC Chief Analyst Consumer and Telecom Research and one of the judges for the awards.

Matt Boon, Managing Vice President, Gartner Research, also a judge for the IT Inspiration Awards said “Each nomination provided an insight on how technology can be leveraged to reap business benefits. Initiatives such as this have the potential to benefit technology innovation as a whole as well, as the storage solutions industry in Asia Pacific specifically by highlighting the challenges and solutions of various deployments.”

The three-day CIO Summit that provided the backdrop of the IT Inspiration Awards was themed ‘Inspire and Innovate - Best Practices for Managing the Explosive Growth of Data to Yield Business Results”. The forum brought together senior technology practitioners, partners and industry experts to discuss burning issues pertaining to storage, find common solutions, address business needs and establish a true Asia Pacific focused storage community.

The keynote presentations and the dialogues that ensued were laced with the commentary on the uncertain economic climate. Insights were raised on current challenges, its impact on IT spending especially with reference to the storage solutions industry. “The turmoil in the global economy calls for greater business agility. IT must be approached in its totality and not just on individual investments as the parameters of success are against revenue trends and ratios. At Hitachi Data Systems, we believe that linking business objectives with the IT infrastructure by applying services-oriented architecture concepts to storage can benefit organizations in the long run. It helps us to fulfill our objective of exceeding customers’ expectations by focusing on their needs in any kind of situation,” said Johnson Khoo, Managing Director, Hitachi Data Systems Sdn Bhd.

Hitachi Data Systems IT Inspiration Award - List of Winners:

CIO of the Year – Hong Kong & CIO of the CIOs
Marc Perrineau
Atos Origin

CIO of the Year – Singapore
Ramon V Karingal
Citi Technology Infrastructure
Singapore

CIO of the Year – Taiwan
Alex Chia
Capital Group

CIO of the Year – India
Harish Shetty
HDFC Bank Limited

CIO of the Year – Malaysia
Jimmy Yeoh
Maagnet Systems SDN BHD

CIO of the Year – Indonesia
Indra Utoyo
PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk

Best Green Strategy for a Data Center
Diamond: Capital Group, Taiwan
Project Centralizes, improves data security with Hitachi Data Systems virtualization and disaster recovery solution.

Platinum: Infosys Technologies Ltd, India
Project Catering to SAP Storage Infrastructure

Gold: Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri, Malaysia
Project Server Consolidation

Most Innovative Use of Technology

Diamond: HDFC Bank Limited, India
Project Innovative Storage Deployment

Platinum: Shanxi Telecom, China
Project IT Universal resource platform

Gold: Vigabyte, AustraliaProject Vigabyte

Most Efficient Use of Technology

Diamond: PT. Indosat Tbk, Indonesia
Project Storage Consolidation and Disaster Recovery

Platinum: Starhub, Singapore
Project Meeting the Challenge & Achieving Operational Excellence

Gold: PetroChina Xinjiang Oilfield Company, China
Project Virtualization Storage Platform

Best Virtualization Strategy

Diamond: Infosys Technologies Ltd, India
Project Catering to SAP Storage Infrastructure

Platinum: The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd, Hong Kong
Project Virtualization to the Rescue

Gold: TelstraClear, New Zealand
Project Storage Consolidation and Disaster Recovery