Company introduces new gateway PHOENIX — Hitachi Data Systems has introduced a new line of NAS gateway products. Announced on Tuesday at Storage Networking World here, the new product family is the result of co-development with NAS pioneer Network Appliance. According to HDS, the new trio of HDS NetApp Enterprise NAS gateways was designed specifically to connect to HDS’ line of Fiber Channel-based arrays (Lightening and Thunder).The products introduced are the GF940 and GF960, designed to connect to the Lightning 9900 V Series systems; and the GF825, which is designed to attach to the Thunder 9500 V Series systems.According to Kevin Sampson, director of product marketing for HDS’ NAS division, NAS is an important area for HDS going forward. “NAS is absolutely an important part of our business,” said Sampson. “We finally have a solution that addresses customer needs.”Prior to its relationship with NetApp, announced last December, HDS only resold NAS products from its parent company Hitachi and Auspex, as well as products from a now-void resell agreement with Network Storage Solutions.HDS’ belated foray into the NAS market comes at a time when competition is running high. Microsoft with its Windows-powered NAS technology and its partners that use it — Dell, HP, and IBM — has made headway in grabbing market share from NetApp and EMC, the current NAS market leaders. Just last week HP introduced StorageWorks NAS b3000, a NAS gateway product designed primarily to consolidate Microsoft Exchange data on a SAN.HDS’ GF940 and GF960 have 9TB and 24TB of capacity, respectively. A clustered version of the devices doubles the capacity. The GF825 scales in capacity to 6TB. Technology Industry