News Releases

Hitachi Partners with Wyle Systems to Meet Growing Storage Demand with a Robust Range of High-Performance Hard Disk Drives

BRISBANE, Calif., http://www.hitachi.us/, August 21, 2000 - Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), Tokyo, Japan, and Wyle Systems, LLC, VEBA Electronics Group Member, announced the appointment of Wyle Systems as an authorized distributor for Hitachi Hard Disk Drives (HDD) throughout the United States. Wyle Systems, a leading international distributor of computer systems and storage solutions, offers direct sales and design-in assistance to OEMs, VARs and resellers for Hitachi's full line of 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch HDD drives.

"Wyle Systems is a well established and reputable distributor that will help broaden our disk drive distribution to meet today's growing need for storage products with top-quality and high-performance drives from Hitachi," said Gary Galusha, vice president of North American Hard Disk Drives sales. "We look forward to a strong partnership with Wyle Systems and are confident that its established presence coupled with Hitachi's family of high-performance drives will ensure Hitachi is at the forefront of the storage market."

Currently, Hitachi's HDD offerings include 2.5-inch mobile HDD and 3.5-inch SCSI and Fibre Channel HDD offerings. Available 2.5-inch drives for notebook computers range from 5 GB to 20 GB. The newest of these use state-of-the-art component technologies to provide higher data density and faster data throughput. Hitachi's 3.5-inch family of drives deliver more capacity and a diversity of interface options with up to 73.9 GB capacities. These drives use Ultra 160 SCSI and Fibre Channel interfaces and are designed for high throughput operating environments, such as network and Internet servers, multimedia product and digital video processing.

With a network of more than 100 knowledgeable field sales professionals in 35 Wyle Systems locations worldwide, Hitachi and Wyle Systems will focus on the SCSI and Fibre Channel hard disk drives for the RAID, SAN and enterprise storage markets. Additionally, Wyle Systems offers its customers complete solutions with value added support through its Technology Solutions Center in Phoenix, Ariz.

"Hitachi's long standing reputation for technical excellence and innovation made our decision to become a Hitachi distributor simple," said William McMahon, CEO at Wyle Systems. "We look for strong and reliable partners to supply us with the technology needed to meet and exceed our customers' needs and with Hitachi products, we are confident that need will be easily met."