OREANDA-NEWS. July 27, 2011. Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT/TSE: 6501) and Hitachi Electronics Services Co., Ltd. (HES), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. today announced that Dr. Naoya Takahashi, President & CEO of HES, has been named as the recipient of the 2012 IEEE*1 Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award. The IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award was established in 1992 in honor of Reynold B. Johnson, a renowned pioneer of magnetic disk technology. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to information storage systems based on its impact and historical significance to the evolution of computer storage systems.

After joining Hitachi, Ltd. in 1973, Takahashi contributed to the advancement of storage technologies through the development of architecture of storage systems and control instructions micro-codes. This award recognizes Takahashi's contributions to technology innovation beginning with storage virtualization technology as well as his leadership in the growth of storage products from peripheral equipment for servers into a major business area in the IT market and the proliferation of storage systems technology on a global scale.

Specifically, in 1995, Takahashi commercialized for the first time in Japan, a disk storage equipment based on RAID*2 technology compatible with the superior RAID5, as an attachment for mainframes. In 2000, he developed a Hitachi original starnet architecture, which via a crossbar switch*3, connects data transmission paths between a "Channel Adapter" control unit (connecting the storage and the server), a "Disk Adapter" control unit (connecting the storage and the HDD) and the cache memory. The architecture achieved high scalability and significant performance enhancements. Furthermore, in 2004, he launched an enterprise disk array system, "Hitachi Universal Storage Platform" which implements a storage controller to enable heterogeneous storage virtualization to be connected and operated as an integrated virtual single unit, dramatically raising efficiency.

As a result, not only were the scalability and reliability of storage systems greatly enhanced but operation management costs could also be drastically cut. Over 18,000*4 units of Hitachi's virtualization controllers have been shipped and are being used by a broad spectrum of customers including financial institutions worldwide.

"I am greatly honored to be named as the recipient for the 2012 IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award. I am also delighted with the recognition that this prestigious award bestows on Hitachi's contributions to the development of the storage systems market worldwide and innovations in storage virtualization technology," said, Dr. Naoya Takahashi, President & CEO, Hitachi Electronics Services Co., Ltd. "The achievements which this award recognizes could not have been realized without the long-term cooperation between users worldwide who shared invaluable comments and feedback, and the engineers and service representatives who listened and worked to incorporate those ideas into new products. The Hitachi Group is committed to continue innovating technologies and products in order to contribute to the development of the world's storage industry."
*1 IEEE is the world's largest technical professional association with over 400,000 members in more than 160 countries worldwide. About IEEE : http://www.ieee.org/about/today/at_a_glance.html
*2 RAID : Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
*3 Cross-bar Switch : A switch located at the crosspoints of transmission paths between several control units and memory units in a storage equipment. When data is transmitted, the switch dynamically chooses the optimal path for high speed transmission.
*4 As at 31st March 2011