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Fidelity National Title Group Ensures the Availability and Manageability of Customer Data with Virtualized Tiered Storage Solution from Hitachi Data Systems


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Moves from Monolithic EMC Storage to the Intelligent Virtualization Capabilities of the Hitachi TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – March 20, 2006—Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, provider of Application Optimized Storage™ solutions and a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), today announced that Fidelity National Title Group (NYSE: FNT), the largest provider of U.S. real estate and financial services, is using the Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform, the Thunder 9585V™ modular storage, and the HiCommand® Suite of management software to support the company’s growing data and business continuity requirements. Hitachi Data Systems and channel partner Datalink, a leading independent information storage architect based in Minneapolis, Minn., delivered a virtualized tiered storage solution that improves manageability of data, mitigates risk of data loss and downtime, and scales easily as Fidelity’s business needs continue to grow and evolve.

With more than seven million homes sold in 2005, the real estate market has been red-hot. Fidelity National Title Group, which handles nearly one-third of all U.S. residential real estate transactions, required a standardized and efficient way to meet its growing business and customer demands.

To centralize data and streamline transactions, Fidelity has developed an enterprise production system to incrementally replace the legacy title and escrow systems that are used collectively to process 2.5 million title insurance transactions annually and maintain over 45 million historical title policy documents. Fidelity’s systems required a more robust storage architecture to accommodate the system’s heavy storage and server capacity requirements.

“Fidelity operates title operations nationwide. That means a 24/7 IT operation and at a cost of approximately $3 million an hour—downtime is not an option,” said Mike Amble, director of Information Technology, Fidelity Information Services. “We were looking to build a sustainable enterprise storage environment to provide assurances that our systems would operate and scale efficiently as our transaction volume increases. Hitachi Data Systems and Datalink were committed to our success and helped to forge a highly available, highly stable storage environment that will help move our business ahead.”
Hitachi Data Systems and Datalink Offer Virtualized Storage Makeover

Fidelity deployed an Application Optimized Storage™ solution with three tiers of virtualized storage, based on the Hitachi TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform and Hitachi Thunder 9585V modular storage systems. The Fidelity IT team worked closely with Hitachi Data Systems and Datalink to implement a three-tiered storage design and evolve its custom NGS application. To facilitate the highest availability and scalability of critical applications, Fidelity created a tier 1 storage class based on the Universal Storage Platform with a RAID-1/5 combination for non-disruptive service and extensive flexibility. This platform provides virtualization of externally attached storage, logical resource partitioning, and universal replication—all from a single management interface—for seamless movement of data between tiers. Fidelity established the Thunder 9585V systems with Fibre Channel drives as tier 2 storage by externally attaching them to the Universal Storage Platform and virtualizing their data.

“This is an excellent example of how Hitachi’s unique controller-based approach to virtualization and tiered storage strategy are delivering tangible results to customers worldwide,” said Scott Genereux, executive vice president and general manager, Global Sales, Marketing, and Support, Hitachi Data Systems. “Fidelity, Datalink, and Hitachi Data Systems truly collaborated to create a reliable and robust solution that enables increased scalability across all storage tiers, with no interruption to any storage tier affected by required changes. That means Fidelity is now able to focus much more on strategic IT management, and proactively support the company’s business goals, transactional growth, and disaster recovery requirements.”

“The ability to rapidly and consistently recover from potential outages was essential to meeting Fidelity’s around-the-clock business demands,” said Scott Robinson, chief technology officer, Datalink. “Fidelity needed a solid business continuity plan with true flexibility at its foundation. To that end, it evaluated technologies based on four key elements: scalable, tiered storage; centralized management software; nimble reporting capabilities. Hitachi Data Systems storage solutions met these requirements on all fronts.”

Today, Fidelity’s IT department can effectively deliver on the critical business and application requirements of its data-intensive operations. The company uses Hitachi virtualization capabilities for resilient non-disruptive service, rapid disaster recovery, and seamless data replication. Hitachi’s feature-rich tools and intuitive automation, implemented in the HiCommand Suite, helps Fidelity proactively monitor its storage environment, while reducing time and complexity for remotely managing backups, upgrades, audit trails, and the continuous growth and increased complexity of its workload.

“Fidelity needed an extraordinary level of stretch—the flexibility to morph and maneuver alongside our hallmark production system,” said Troy Dechant, IT director of Open Systems Products, Fidelity Information Services. “We selected Hitachi Data Systems, which exceeded our expectations with next-generation hardware and software, plus offered us a strong, strategic partnership.”
About Hitachi Data Systems

Hitachi Data Systems leverages global R&D resources to develop storage solutions built on industry-leading technology with the performance, availability and scalability to maximize customers’ ROI and minimize their risk. By focusing on the customer’s perspective as we apply the best hardware, software, and services from Hitachi and our partners, we uniquely satisfy our customers’ business needs.

With approximately 2,900 employees, Hitachi Data Systems conducts business through direct and indirect channels in the public, government and private sectors in over 170 countries and regions. Its customers include more than 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For more information, please visit our Web site at http://www.hds.com.

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 347,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2004 (ended March 31, 2005) consolidated sales totaled 9,027.0 billion yen ($84.4 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company’s Website at http://www.hitachi.com.

About Fidelity National Title Group, Inc.

Fidelity National Title Group, Inc. is the nation’s largest title insurance company. The Company’s title insurance underwriters - Fidelity National Title, Chicago Title, Ticor Title, Security Union Title and Alamo Title - issue approximately 31 percent of all title insurance policies in the United States. Through its direct operations and agencies, the Company provides title insurance in 49 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Canada. In 2005, FNT also acquired Service Link, a leading provider of title and closing services to major financial institutions and lenders, including six of the top 10 lending institutions in the United States ranked by loan origination volume. More information about Fidelity National Title Group can be found at http://www.fntg.com.

© 2006, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. Hitachi Data Systems is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. HiCommand is a registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. TagmaStore and Application Optimized Storage are trademarks of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. All other trade names, trademarks, and service marks used herein are the rightful property of their respective owners.



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