US data storage provider opens first manufacturing center in China

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), a US-based data management and storage technology provider, announced the opening of its first country manufacturing center in China on Thursday.

The plant, located in Taicang of East China's Jiangsu province, will be one of the five major manufacturing centers of HDS apart from Singapore, Brazil, the United States and the Netherlands. It will be responsible for the production of HDS Virtual Storage Platform VSP G series, HDS integrated solution plans, and a number of software and hardware services based on cloud computing and big data.

HDS has achieved rapid growth in China, with the sales revenue doubling in the past four years and the compound average annual growth rate coming at 25 percent. Daniel Chong, general manager of HDS Chinese Mainland and Taiwan, said the transformation that China is witnessing indicates huge room for growth.

The number of Internet users of HDS in China has rocketed by 600 percent between 2012 and 2014, with the business volume multiplying by 1,282 percent. The number of high technology industry has surged by 385 percent with the business volume soaring by 320 percent.

Brian Householder, chief operating officer of HDS, said the company as a whole has been quite successful in the past few years by attaching more importance to software and related services. At present, about 60 percent of the company's revenues come from this sector and the number is expected to rise to 80 percent in the near future.