Hitachi Upgrades Server Line With Latest Intel ChipsHitachi Upgrades Server Line With Latest Intel Chips

Hitachi on Tuesday upgraded its BladeSymphony server line with the latest Intel Itanium and Xeon processors.

The BladeSymphony 1000 is now available with dual-core Itanium 9100 series processors. The blade server is also available with dual-core Xeon 5200 chips and quad-core Xeon 5400 processors. The 1000 blade system includes Hitachi's embedded virtualization technology, which the company calls Virtage. Within a 10u chassis, customers can fit as many as eight Hitachi blades.

Hitachi also is making the same Xeon series available for the BladeSymphony 320, which is available in a 6u chassis. Hitachi enclosures support new and older blades, so companies can introduce new servers to gain immediate performance upgrades, the vendor said.

In related news, Hitachi introduced a Web-based console for the BladeSymphony 320. The visual interface, which provides access to common administrative tasks, is meant to reduce maintenance and installation time, as well as provide a schema for validation that reduces the risk of making an error, Hitachi said.

Hitachi also announced several new resellers in the United States, including Praecipio Consulting, Consiliant, Data Partner Group, and I-Access.

Hitachi is a smaller player in the worldwide server market. In the first quarter, the company was not among the top five vendors, which are led by Hewlett-Packard in terms of revenue, according to IDC. The others include No. 2 IBM, followed by Dell, Sun Microsystems, and Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens. The remaining vendors collectively accounted for 13.8% of the market.

The server blade market is particularly hot. Factory revenue increased 53.7% in the first quarter, the fastest rate in 10 quarters, according to IDC. Overall, bladed servers, including x86, EPIC, and RISC blades, brought in $1.2 billion, which amounted to 9.2% of total server revenue. HP led with a 46.9% market share and IBM was second with 30%.