Hitachi has a history of copying technology invented by others and infringing patents.
Ouch! That straight cross from the EMC press release has to hurt a proud outfit like Hitachi whose chairman has repeatedly stated his desire to keep his unwieldy Japanese conglomerate on the cutting edge of things.
To put this conflict in juicier context, EMC gained nearly 5 market share points on its way to capturing more than 30% of the 2001 Storage Software market while Hitachi eked out less than a measly 2%. Yet all this time, Hitachi has continued to insist on swapping APIs on an equal basis despite the glaring disparity in the quantity and quality of APIs.
This move by EMC has serious implications for HWP/Compaq and Sun which have continue to invest heavily in version 1.5 type of products built around the Hitachi/HDS box that they are both reselling. As many here know, there are only three viable high-end storage platforms: EMC, IBM and HDS. That's why both HWP and Sun both decided to resell the HDS box.
Unfortunately for Sun and HWP/Compaq, EMC already controls 55% of the $1.1B Replication market so more delays in introducing crucial basic replication technologies will set these vendors back in terms of years while EMC is rapidly increasing the automated features of its prized replication technology with products like Replication Manager, which not so coincidentally is designed to work with EMC and non-EMC storage hardware.
At the very least this move strenghtens the engineering factions inside Sun, HWP and Compaq that have long favored internally developed products and opposed reselling the Hitachi box.
EMC does a very good job of presenting its case and explaining the issues on its website. Its ITC complaint, for example, chronicles its skirmishes with Hitachi over the years.
.......The products at issue in this complaint are data storage systems and components of such systems that store, manage and protect the massive amount of data that is generated and used in today's business environment. EMC pioneered an entirely new data storage concept and brought that concept to the market with the introduction of the first Symmetrix data storage product in 1990.
The Symmetrix product line was a revolutionary advance in data storage that was so enthusiastically received that by the mid-1990's, EMC's market share surpassed that of IBM, the market leader up to that time. EMC has continuously invested heavily in research and development to innovate new functions and features that further improve its product line. Thus, EMC has established itself as an innovator and leader in storage technology.
In contrast, Hitachi has a long history of playing "follow the leader" and of riding on the intellectual property coattails of others. Through the 1980's and early 1990's, when IBM was the market leader, Hitachi shadowed IBM, offering the same or similar functions and features at a lower price. Similarly, when EMC became the leader of the market for external data storage systems in the mid-1990's, Hitachi began shadowing EMC.
For example, Hitachi followed its pattern of riding on EMC's coattails in connection with its introduction of a product designed to compete with EMC's TimeFinder™ product. TimeFinder™, which EMC introduced on April 28, 1997, was the first product in the industry capable of making a copy of primary data that could be accessed and modified by a second application independent of the continued processing of the primary data by a primary application. The primary data can be used for continuing production transactions, while the copy can be disconnected from the primary application and addressed independently for testing or running reports. Two of the patents infringed by Hitachi; the '066 and '497 patents; cover TimeFinder™. Soon after the introduction of TimeFinder™, Hitachi announced its corresponding product, "TimeTraveller." Hitachi clearly chose the very similar name "TimeTraveller" so as to identify its product with EMC. Furthermore, Hitachi's press release parroted EMC's original TimeFinder™ press release almost word for word. Subsequently, when faced with the threat of litigation by EMC, Hitachi changed the name of its product.
Undeterred, Hitachi has continued to engage in such conduct. More specifically, following EMC's subsequent introductions of Optimizer™ and Power Path™ products, Hitachi named corresponding products "Dynamic Optimizer" and "Path Manager," respectively. (Optimizer™ and Power Path™ are not part of EMC's complaint to the ITC.) Once again, EMC notified Hitachi of its wrongful conduct, and Hitachi changed the name of its product.
Still another example is EMC's Data Migration product that is used to transfer data from an old storage system to a new one without involving the host computer. EMC was the first to introduce this type of product. The '748 patent covers Data Migration. EMC introduced its Data Migration Services on November 6, 1995. Within six months, in May 1996, Hitachi issued a press release announcing that Hitachi had introduced a data migration product six weeks earlier.
EMC also pioneered the first product to provide a real time back-up copy of data at a remote location so that if data at a primary site were destroyed by disaster, business could continue without major disruption. The '792 and '347 patents cover this product, called Symmetrix Remote Data Facility ("SRDF"). EMC introduced SRDF on October 3, 1994. Although Hitachi did not announce a corresponding product until 1998, it once again did so by shadowing EMC and announcing the introduction of a product when that product (i.e. HORC) was in fact not available until much later.
EMC has had numerous meetings with Hitachi, advising Hitachi about EMC's patent portfolio and warning Hitachi to stop utilizing EMC's intellectual property. However, negotiations on this subject have not been successful. In the absence of any serious offers by Hitachi, and without any expectation that Hitachi will modify its behavior, EMC has no alternative to filing this Complaint and seeking the necessary relief from the Commission.
emc.com
According to a new report issued this week by Gartner Dataquest*, EMC established a 55% revenue share in 2001 of a $1.1 billion market segment that Gartner forecasts will quintuple over the next five years.....
According to Gartner Dataquest's report ("2001 Storage Management Software Market Share), EMC led the Unix-based data replication software market with a 78% revenue share, 17 times greater than its closest competitor; EMC led in Windows-based data replication software with a 51% share, 4 times greater than its closest competitor; EMC led in iSeries/400-based data replication software with a 54% share; and EMC led in mainframe-based data replication software with a 37.9% share.....
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