Hitachi Data Systems Announces New Executive Management Team

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has announced a new management team that includes Shinjiro Iwata as CEO and president. Marlene Woodworth has been named vice president and general manager of Global Marketing and Operations. Christine Wallis has been named vice president of Global Strategy and Planning.

Iwata, who has been with HDS for 4 years, is a 29-year veteran of Hitachi, HDS's parent company. Iwata is returning to HDS from his position as general manager of Hitachi's Global Business Development Division. He was with HDS from 1997 to August 2000 as executive vice president in the company's storage-line business. During his tenure as vice president, he helped forge an important and successful OEM relationship with Hewlett-Packard (HP).

HDS also announced a summary of achievements for the past 6 months, including an increase of storage revenues by 20 percent, doubling its market share in the high-end RAID marketplace to 32.3 percent, continuing a growth of about 4 percent in its Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution groups (despite a decline in growth by competitors), and the release of its storage management framework, called HiCommand.

Iwata reiterated HDS's goal of becoming the number one storage company by 2004. Currently EMC holds that title.