TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hitachi Cable, Ltd. (TOKYO:5812) has announced the selection of its Apresia (NOTE 1, 2) Ethernet switch series by Global Data Service Joint Stock Company (hereafter, “GDS,” headquartered in Hanoi), a joint venture data center service company launched by Japanese communications provider NTT Communications Corporation and its Vietnamese counterpart, Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group, in Vietnam. Apresia switches will serve as part of the 10-Gbps backbone system of the company.

Following the development of its private brand Apresia series of Ethernet switches in 2003, Hitachi Cable has been expanding its sales by responding to the needs of telecommunications carriers for wide-area Ethernet services and of businesses for local-area network services. Its efforts, boosted by its flexibility in developing functions fully suited to the characteristics of particular communication networks and the distinctive reliability of its products, have brought the company a 21% share of Japan’s layer 2 switch market. (NOTE 3)

Overseas, the company’s accomplishments, which have long achieved high acclaim among Japanese telecommunications carriers, have duly been acknowledged and, as a result, Apresia switches have so far been adopted for service stations in nine countries by communications carriers operating outside Japan to serve as edge switches in global wide-area Ethernet service systems, leading the company to rank third in the global Ethernet switch market for telecommunications carriers. (NOTE 4)

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in risk management involving contingency planning and security measures regarding the information systems of corporations alongside the need for the uninterrupted operation of information systems in general. In response, demand has accordingly been on the increase for services in which operations of servers and other devices of corporations are entrusted to special data management firms in the form of data centers.

In Japan, connection between a data center and the local area network of a corporation is normally carried out using Ethernet technology, whose low implementation cost and high reliability are widely appreciated, initiating a shift from conventional IP-VPN connection to Ethernet-based connection outside Japan alike.

In the same manner, Hitachi Cable’s Apresia switches will be used by Vietnam’s GDS as its backbone switches for 10-Gbps network connections to local network providers. The plan will mark the first implementation of Apresia switches in a data center outside Japan.

GDS will be the first Japanese company to provide high-quality data services of the Tier 3 level (NOTE 5) in Vietnam. It plans to start data center services in Hanoi in 2009, connecting an Ethernet-based 10-Gbps network to the networks of communications carriers operating in Hanoi to enable high-speed/wide-area connections to user sites. GDS next plans to launch the service in Ho Chi Minh City.

The selection of Hitachi Cable’s Apresia series as GDS’s backbone switches is based on the recognition of the switches as being outstanding in terms of error avoidance functions, reliability, and implementation record.

With its achievements in the field of global wide-area Ethernet services serving as a toehold, Hitachi Cable, Ltd. in the future plans to promote its Apresia series of switches in markets requiring reliable high-speed Ethernet communications services as offered by local communications carriers connected to global networks as well as foreign-owned global network service providers, thereby further increasing its share in the Ethernet switch market.