Hitachi Vantara named leader for AI storage in GigaOm Radar 2025
The newly released GigaOm Radar report evaluates advanced storage platforms designed specifically for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. This is the first time the report has assessed high-performance storage optimised for AI, and Hitachi Vantara's positioning underscores the company's capabilities in supporting enterprise-scale data requirements for AI and machine learning (ML).
Report evaluation
The GigaOm Radar for High-Performance Storage Optimised for AI Workloads reviews market solutions based on their key capabilities, foundational criteria, feature completeness, and readiness for future demands. Leaders in this assessment are noted for their maturity and strategic alignment with evolving enterprise AI needs, as well as their ability to execute at scale.
Hitachi Vantara's placement as a Leader and Fast Mover was attributed to its Hitachi iQ portfolio, which provides AI-ready infrastructure solutions. The report highlighted several strengths, including quality of service (QoS) and workload isolation, GPU-direct storage integration and AI-optimised data layout and management.
The report noted, "Hitachi iQ offers world-class QoS and workload isolation capabilities." By combining file system-level policies with flexible cluster architecture, Hitachi iQ enables effective resource allocation, supporting consistent and reliable performance for high-priority AI and ML workloads, even in multi-tenant or shared environments.
The platform's GPU-direct storage integration was identified as another area of strong performance. Optimised drivers within Hitachi iQ support efficient data transfer between storage and GPU memory, enhancing outcomes for AI and ML workflows.
Additionally, Hitachi iQ's data management strategy utilises intelligent placement across storage tiers, such as TLC/QLC NVMe flash storage for high performance and object storage for additional capacity. Real-time monitoring and user-defined policies are built in to balance performance and cost efficiency for varying data patterns.
Industry commentary
"What really stood out about Hitachi Vantara's offerings is the quality of service and the ability to isolate workloads," said Whit Walters, Field CTO and Analyst at GigaOm. "They've delivered a well-integrated, scalable platform in Hitachi iQ, backed by enterprise-proven storage. This combination gives organisations a powerful and flexible foundation for operationalising AI at scale, especially as large-scale AI and GenAI workloads will require the ability to manage data and performance as demands continue to grow."
The GigaOm report also referenced ongoing collaborations including a partnership with NVIDIA on the NVIDIA Data Platform for Hitachi iQ, a partnership that adds to the capabilities of the platform. The roadmap for Hitachi iQ includes new hardware and AI solutions, among them the Hitachi iQ M Series, announced earlier in the year. Integration with the Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One) enables further intelligent tiering between NVMe flash and object storage, providing additional flexibility and performance optimisation.
Octavian Tanase, Chief Product Officer at Hitachi Vantara, commented on the recognition. "AI isn't just pushing the boundaries of what infrastructure needs to do; it's completely redrawing them," he said. "Our goal with Hitachi iQ is to give customers a high-performance foundation that removes complexity, accelerates outcomes, and adapts to whatever their AI journey requires next. By integrating Hitachi iQ with our VSP One platform, we're enabling a flexible, intelligent storage strategy that's ready for what's now and what's next."
Ongoing awards
This rating follows recent industry recognition for Hitachi Vantara. In May 2025, the company was awarded the Sustainable Technology Award at the Global Tech & AI Awards for its efforts in sustainable data infrastructure with the VSP One Block solution. Earlier in the year, GigaOm also recognised Hitachi Vantara as a Leader and Outperformer in the GigaOm Radar for Primary Storage, related to its VSP One hybrid cloud data platform.
The GigaOm Radar for High-Performance Storage Optimised for AI Workloads aims to shed light on platforms capable of addressing the increased performance, scalability, and operational requirements integral to enterprise AI and machine learning deployments.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Techday NZ
7 hours ago
- Techday NZ
Varonis, Microsoft deepen partnership to secure enterprise AI
Varonis has entered a strategic partnership with Microsoft aimed at enhancing data security, governance, and compliance for organisations adopting artificial intelligence technologies. The partnership will build upon existing product offerings that support secure implementation of Microsoft Copilot and deepen the integration between the Varonis Data Security Platform and Microsoft's suite of security tools. This will encompass Microsoft Purview and expand to deliver automated protection for sensitive data within the Microsoft ecosystem and additional environments. Both companies have committed to an engineering-driven plan focused on addressing the risks posed by unauthorised access to data from AI tools, agents and large language models (LLMs), which is increasingly a concern as the use of workplace AI grows. Yaki Faitelson, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Varonis, commented on the development: "Varonis built a world-class SaaS architecture on Microsoft Azure that protects the world's data and accelerates secure AI adoption. We are excited to expand our partnership with Microsoft, combining their innovation in AI with Varonis' deep expertise in data security." Nick Parker, President of Industry and Partnerships at Microsoft, also reflected on the partnership: "Varonis' SaaS platform integrates the most advanced capabilities in Microsoft Azure. Through our collaboration with Varonis, we are empowering customers to embrace AI securely and confidently with enterprise-wide data security and governance powered by Microsoft Purview and Varonis." The integration of Varonis with Microsoft Purview is expected to offer unified data classification, permissions enforcement, and policy management capabilities. This will target not only Microsoft 365 and Azure, but is also projected to extend to major SaaS and multi-cloud platforms such as Salesforce, Databricks, and ServiceNow. Through this collaboration, organisations are expected to improve their ability to proactively reduce risk and streamline compliance efforts, particularly as the deployment of AI-driven and agent-based applications becomes more widespread in enterprise settings. The announcement highlights the increasing focus on securing data integrity and compliance controls in the context of advanced technologies. The emphasis on automating protection and simplifying rule management for sensitive data reflects industry priorities as organisations continue to deploy AI-centric solutions. The Varonis and Microsoft partnership signals ongoing cooperation between data security and cloud infrastructure providers as businesses adapt security and governance frameworks for evolving digital and regulatory environments. Varonis is encouraging organisations to take a data-centric approach to cybersecurity by securing what it calls their "most valuable and vulnerable asset" with its unified data security platform. The company's platform provides comprehensive protection, enabling businesses to reduce their blast radius and prevent data breaches by securing sensitive information directly at the source. With increasing threats targeting unstructured data across cloud and on-premises environments, Varonis continues to position its solution as a critical layer of defence in a modern security strategy. Follow us on: Share on:
Techday NZ
7 hours ago
- Techday NZ
How AI is driving the convergence of networking and security
AI is rewriting the rules around networking and security. Data-intensive AI workloads are placing significant demands on network infrastructure. At the same time, AI is becoming both a weapon for threat actors and a potential target for attacks. New approaches and new solutions are needed if enterprises are to prosper in the AI era. The impact of AI cannot be overestimated. It is acting like a new kind of gravity, pulling together the previously distinct worlds of networking and security, while reshaping traffic flows across every network layer. We have become accustomed to the changes that AI is bringing about within the data center, and the overheads it is placing on data center infrastructure. But it is now apparent that its influence is being felt much more widely, reshaping requirements across the entire ICT landscape, from the WAN down to the campus. AI is turning security on its head, believes Mauricio Sanchez, Senior Director of Enterprise Security and Networking Research with independent analyst firm Dell'Oro Group: "AI has been transforming the hacker community, enabling even mediocre players to become super hackers," he believes. "The positive aspects of AI are being turned on their head and used for evil." Add in the perennial demand of enterprises for five nines of uptime, and a cogent argument is emerging for a convergence of networking and security: "Network operations and security operations can simply no longer exist in parallel silos," notes Sanchez. Enterprises are all at different stages on this journey, working out how to unite AI with converged networking and security at their own pace. Some are simply applying AI to legacy network and security operations. "They are finding, as they try to move on from this point, that they are getting into what I would call AI-strained infrastructure," says Sanchez. "This is where administrators are sweating bullets, not really empowered or able to react appropriately." Some progressive companies are in a better place than this when it comes to embracing AI and bringing it to bear on both networking and security, according to Dell'Oro's findings, moving towards what Sanchez describes as the AI augmented-network stage. "Beyond that is a level where both infrastructural change and operational change lead to an AI-empowered network that is being run cleanly and efficiently, able to use AI and serve AI applications well," he concludes. "That is the objective over the next five years for many enterprises." New challenges, new solutions To further explore these themes, Sanchez was invited by Unified SASE as a Service provider Aryaka to join a 'fireside chat'. Along with Sanchez was Renuka Nadkarni, Chief Product Officer, Aryaka and Kevin Deierling SVP Marketing, Networking, NVIDIA. All three agree that AI is changing cybersecurity in many different ways. "AI is using a ton of data, and that creates some opacity," observes NVIDIA's Deierling. "It's hard to see what's happening when AIs are talking to other Ais, and that creates new challenges." Agility and flexibility are essential responses: "The amount of data that's being created by AI is massive, and the networking performance needed is incredible," he says. "We're shipping 400 gigabit per second networks today, moving to 800 gigabits per second, with 1.6 terabits right around the corner. You can't just statically create a set of rules and hope for the best. It's about being dynamic and responsive in the face of all these new challenges." Nadkarni of Aryaka believes it all comes down to an age old problem, that of reconciling performance with security: "Back in the day, you had separate networking and security teams making separate decisions," she points out. "The security people were often getting in the way of the business, with frequent conflict between the two. Now our customers are migrating heavily towards a converged networking and security play. And it's not easy, because the whole industry has been divided into networking vendors and security vendors. The whole unified SASE as a service that we are trying to bring to the table was architected from the start to bring things together." An added challenge, according to Nadkarni, is that AI introduces a certain amount of undeterministic behaviour, both on the networking and the security side: "Customer network architecture and network design used to be about a point to point link," she says. "It was deterministic, because people would typically buy from service providers in increments of 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps, defined as between offices and data centers. But now users are everywhere. Applications are hosted in public clouds, accessed via SaaS. We're seeing a lot of AI applications coming in as SaaS. Traffic patterns have changed drastically, but the need for security is something that hasn't changed." AI has certainly spelled the end for the static workloads of yesterday where it was easy for networking and security managers to keep tabs on what is happening. In an era of agentic AI workflows, where AIs are talking to Ais, and then interacting with humans, the pace has picked up and complexity can be overwhelming, often at the expense of security. Deierling says that to assist here, NVIDIA has developed a platform called Morpheus that characterizes behaviours: "It characterizes devices as well as people, and we developed a digital fingerprint using AI to do that," he explains. "We stream the data in real time to these powerful AI engines that can detect anomalous behaviours. If suddenly a human being is firing passwords at the speed of a computer, we can detect that in real time and actually isolate that traffic. We accelerate things with our networking hardware, and we stream telemetry data so we can perform AI very quickly. And then we provide those solutions to partners to build something that customers can use." Nadkarni says Morpheus works well with Aryaka's platform: "In most security implementations, you take a subset of your traffic and share it with a security vendor," she says. "But if you already knew what traffic needed to be processed you wouldn't need to do that. Because of Morpheus, we have the ability to process all traffic through our system, and we don't have to make choices." She invites a comparison between the fast-evolving AI we see today and the recent emergence of DevSecOps: "It touches so many aspects of a customer's activities. Many of our customers are telling us they are creating an AI adoption team. We advise them to break down the problem into smaller pieces. Identify all the stakeholders who are accountable for it. For example, who owns the data? Security of data is really important when it comes to AI." AI is here, it's massive and it's going to transform every industry, concludes Deierling: "Every enterprise should focus on their core expertise, and use AI to accelerate that," he advises. "AI is fast, and it uses huge amounts of data. It's a different type of challenge than what we've seen, but I agree with Renuka that it's an evolution of DevSecOps. Call it AISecOps. You need to protect models, you need to protect data, you need to protect users." Nadkarni believes we are in 'very exciting times': "We've already seen adoption of cloud, and of different SaaS applications," she says. "AI will have a bigger impact than that. But as Kevin was saying, enterprises should focus on the most important things for their business and then leverage the latest AI technologies that are available, as well as make sure that their network is modernized. It's the industry's job to focus on providing the best technology, offering the best solutions, making it easier to adopt AI and go through the changes that are coming. It's a privilege to be around at this time, seeing all the benefits of this new technology as they unfold." Sanchez from Dell'Oro Group concludes with the advice that all enterprises go back to basics, focussing on things like visibility: "In order to do that, they need to have the right infrastructure in place, the right foundational elements, because you can't build a strong house on weak foundations," he claims. "Don't try to figure this out for yourself. There are smart people, from companies like NVIDIA and Aryaka, that can help on this journey to make sure that that you don't stumble."
Techday NZ
10 hours ago
- Techday NZ
Cloudflare blocks AI crawlers to support content creators
Cloudflare has implemented a new default setting to block AI crawlers from accessing website content without explicit permission or compensation, making it the first internet infrastructure provider to do so. With this change, every new customer and domain on Cloudflare's platform will start with a setting that blocks AI crawlers by default, shifting the responsibility to AI companies to request access and clarify the crawler's intended purpose, such as training, inference, or search. This new approach replaces the previous opt-out system with an opt-in model, giving more power to content creators and publishers over the use of their work. Cloudflare is also developing a feature called "Pay Per Crawl," which would allow content creators to request payment from AI companies seeking to use their content, thereby creating potential new revenue streams. This move addresses concerns about AI companies scraping web content without consent or compensation—a practice that many publishers and stakeholders argue threatens the future economic sustainability of the internet. Shifting value in online content The longstanding model of the internet has been based on a cycle in which search engines index web content, drive traffic to original websites, and provide revenue to creators through advertising. However, according to Cloudflare, the growing use of AI crawlers that extract information for large language models and other generative applications has disrupted this cycle by delivering answers without redirecting users to the original source. This change means creators may lose both the financial benefits and audience engagement historically generated by their work. Matthew Prince, Cloudflare's Co-founder and CEO, commented, "If the Internet is going to survive the age of AI, we need to give publishers the control they deserve and build a new economic model that works for everyone – creators, consumers, tomorrow's AI founders, and the future of the web itself. Original content is what makes the Internet one of the greatest inventions in the last century, and it's essential that creators continue making it. AI crawlers have been scraping content without limits. Our goal is to put the power back in the hands of creators, while still helping AI companies innovate. This is about safeguarding the future of a free and vibrant Internet with a new model that works for everyone." This sentiment has been echoed by several publishers and content platforms. Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, stated, "Cloudflare's innovative approach to block AI crawlers is a game-changer for publishers and sets a new standard for how content is respected online. When AI companies can no longer take anything, they want for free, it opens the door to sustainable innovation built on permission and partnership. This is a critical step toward creating a fair value exchange on the Internet that protects creators, supports quality journalism and holds AI companies accountable." Neil Vogel, CEO of Dotdash Meredith, remarked, "We have long said that AI platforms must fairly compensate publishers and creators to use our content. We can now limit access to our content to those AI partners willing to engage in fair arrangements. We're proud to support Cloudflare and look forward to using their tools to protect our content and the open web." Renn Turiano, Chief Consumer and Product Officer at Gannett Media, noted, "As the largest publisher in the country, comprised of USA TODAY and over 200 local publications throughout the USA TODAY Network, blocking unauthorised scraping and the use of our original content without fair compensation is critically important. As our industry faces these challenges, we are optimistic the Cloudflare technology will help combat the theft of valuable IP." Other technology companies have also spoken in support of the new permission-based system. Bill Ready, CEO of Pinterest, stated, "Creators and publishers around the world leverage Pinterest to expand their businesses, reach new audiences and directly measure their success. As AI continues to reshape the digital landscape, we are committed to building a healthy Internet infrastructure where content is used for its intended purpose, so creators and publishers can thrive." Steve Huffman, Reddit's Co-founder and CEO, pointed out, "AI companies, search engines, researchers, and anyone else crawling sites have to be who they say they are. And any platform on the web should have a say in who is taking their content for what. The whole ecosystem of creators, platforms, web users and crawlers will be better when crawling is more transparent and controlled, and Cloudflare's efforts are a step in the right direction for everyone." Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis, added, "We applaud Cloudflare for advocating for a sustainable digital ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders — the consumers who rely on credible information, the publishers who invest in its creation, and the advertisers who support its dissemination." Default enforcement Prior to this change, Cloudflare had already offered a one-click option to block AI crawlers since mid-2024. Over a million customers have enabled this option. With the latest move, every new website signing up to Cloudflare will be prompted to decide whether to allow or deny AI crawler access, streamlining the decision process and ensuring the default favours content owner control. Industry support More than 30 publishers, media, and technology companies have voiced their support for the new permission-based crawling model, including ADWEEK, The Associated Press, TIME, The Atlantic, Reddit, Pinterest, Quora, Sky News Group, and Universal Music Group, among others. Will Lee, CEO of ADWEEK, stated, "As the front page and homepage for marketing, advertising and media industry leaders, ADWEEK's position has been clear that we must be compensated for our investment grade journalism and information. I am thrilled Cloudflare has created a marketplace and mechanism that will enable us to properly participate in the promise LLMs have for our industry." Paul Edmondson, CEO of The Arena Group, said, "We think of our writers and content creators as entrepreneurs. Their work deserves protection. By blocking unauthorized AI crawlers, Cloudflare is not just defending content – it's defending the future of creators and storytellers. This is a vital move toward a digital economy built on trust, permission and fair value." Additional key supporters include BuzzFeed, PMC, Quora, Stack Overflow, News/Media Alliance, and Webflow, all of whom have commented on the significance of the move for the digital economy and the rights of creators. Technical implementation Cloudflare has also put forward new ways for AI bots to authenticate themselves and for webmasters to identify them, including participating in the development of industry protocols for bot identification and authentication. These mechanisms aim to increase transparency in the operation of AI crawlers, allowing website owners to make more informed choices about access to their content. AI companies are now required to obtain clear, explicit permission from websites prior to scraping content for AI training or generation purposes. Existing and future customers of Cloudflare can review and modify their crawler settings as required.
