New NetApp Software Enhances Data Centre
SYDNEY, Australia - 27 June 2007 -- Network
Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) today strengthened its data
management portfolio by bringing customers new software solutions
to help simplify management, reduce complexity, and lower cost in
the data centre. Customers demand cost-effective management, simple
provisioning, robust protection, and continuous data access. The
NetApp software portfolio offers all of these benefits, and now
extends them even further to support heterogeneous, multi-vendor
environments.
In its effort to address these customer needs in mixed,
multi-vendor storage environments, today NetApp announced new
targeted offerings based on its ReplicatorX™ (formerly TDPS)
enterprise-class replication software for disaster recovery (DR),
data migration, and cloning for test and development. The
nondisruptive offerings translate to reduced acquisition and
deployment costs and freedom from vendor lock-in for data centre
customers.
In related news, NetApp enhanced both SnapDrive®, for server
storage management, and Virtual File Manager™ Enterprise
Edition (VFM®-EE), for file data management. NetApp also
recently strengthened its customers' application data management
capabilities by adding support for SAP (see related press release
at http://www.netapp.com/news/press/news_rel_20070424)
and SharePoint® 2007 (see related press release at http://www.netapp.com/news/press/news_rel_20070605a)
environments to its existing portfolio of solutions for
Oracle®, Microsoft® SQL, and Microsoft Exchange. All are
included in the NetApp Manageability Software Family that NetApp
customers leverage for increased productivity and flexibility by
allowing the application administrators to manage their data and
react quickly to changing business conditions.
"Today's announcement speaks to continued and expanded NetApp
expertise in the data centre and in addressing both NetApp and
heterogeneous data and storage management," said Patrick Rogers,
vice president, Solutions Marketing at NetApp. "In mixed-vendor
storage environments we're providing customers with the flexibility
to support multiple vendors and protocols with a budget-friendly
tiered storage approach. In a NetApp storage environment, we're
offering customers powerful tools that are application-centric for
easy management and that use thin provisioning for space
optimisation. Both solutions are empowering our customers to better
protect and access their data assets while keeping costs
down."
New NetApp ReplicatorX Solutions
New targeted ReplicatorX offerings are based on solution features
that address the specific business needs of enterprise customers
with mixed storage environments. These four new offerings include
enterprise and standard editions for heterogeneous DR, data
migration, and cloning of production data for test and development
as well as a business continuity service provider offering.
Conventional storage array-based replication alternatives are known
for locking customers into expensive, single-vendor storage systems
at recovery sites. ReplicatorX enables you to tier a DR storage
infrastructure to leverage cost-effective storage solutions at
recovery sites-no matter the distance. Compared to typical
host-based heterogeneous replication alternatives, ReplicatorX has
almost no impact on application performance. Customers can deploy
these targeted offerings with an easy-to-use centralised management
interface for enterprise-wide protection. Additionally, support for
global data consistency across multiple servers and/or storage
infrastructures results in rapid application recovery from a
disaster, eliminating the time-consuming task of data
reconciliation at the recovery site.
QUINN-direct Insurance is a wholly owned insurance company within
the Quinn group of companies based in Ireland. The company provides
a full suite of general insurance products including motor and home
insurance as well as commercial liability, property damage, and
commercial vehicle and fleet covers. QUINN-direct deployed NetApp
ReplicatorX in its Wintel server environment to improve
performance, have better control over application recovery times,
and provide data integrity.
"QUINN-direct has aggressive business continuance objectives
designed to best serve our customers, which sets us apart from our
competition," said Michael Graham, IT Infrastructure manager at
QUINN-direct. "The ability to quickly failover servers when
required is vital to our business operations. A near-real-time
recovery plan for all IT services is critical for our business
strategy and continued growth and for addressing regulatory
compliance. The easy-to-manage, heterogeneous ReplicatorX solution
provides QUINN-direct with the sense of security that, even in the
face of a natural event or disaster, our customers' data can be
easily recovered and protected."
Enhanced Manageability Software Offerings
NetApp, positioned in the Visionary quadrant of Gartner's 2007
Storage Resource Management and SAN Management Software Magic
Quadrant (http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/gc/webletter/netapp/issue12/gartner1.html),
is helping customers increase business responsiveness, more easily
manage their application data availability, and lower their cost of
management with the company's various suites of manageability
products. Today's enhancements to SnapDrive for Windows® and
UNIX® provide increased productivity and flexibility by
automating provisioning of storage to a server. The new version of
SnapDrive for Windows provides the first true thin provisioning
capability in the market that enables customers to optimise the
primary storage utilisation and, more importantly, their secondary
storage utilisation, as well as SnapDrive's Snapshot™
management capabilities. Integration with Windows and UNIX
platforms has been enhanced with the addition of rapid recovery
capabilities, thus increasing the availability of applications.
Additionally, the latest version of VFM provides enhanced UNIX
support with the addition of optimised file data migration and
management for RHEL 4.0 and Solaris™ 10.0. NetApp also
recently extended its data management value to more
customer-critical business data with new offerings for SAP and
SharePoint 2007.
Greenhill & Company, an independent global investment banking
firm focused on mergers and acquisitions, financial restructuring,
and merchant banking deployed VFM and NetApp
SnapMirror®.
"We were in need of a reliable business continuity solution that
helped us to simply manage our data, which included Word files,
PowerPoint presentations, and many Excel files," said John Shaffer,
director of Global Systems and Technology at Greenhill. "We
selected NetApp based on its architectural simplicity. NetApp
SnapMirror with VFM software support byte-level replications
between our New York headquarters and offices in London and
Frankfurt, Germany, as well as an off-site DR facility. NetApp is
helping us to dramatically reduce complexity and simplify how we're
managing data."
Professional Services
Complete design and implementation services are available for
deploying both ReplicatorX data cloning and disaster recovery
solutions in heterogeneous storage environments as well as
SnapDrive storage resource management and SAN management solutions.
NetApp ReplicatorX Implementation Services include both a
fixed-price ReplicatorX Essentials Service and a custom ReplicatorX
Design and Implementation Service so customers can cost-effectively
unify their mixed legacy storage disaster recovery environment and
put the disaster recovery copy to active business use. For more
information on NetApp professional services visit
www.netapp.com/support/.
Pricing and Availability
All products are available immediately worldwide. Customer pricing
for products described in this press release is available from
NetApp sales or sales partners.
Technical Information
More information on this and other NetApp offerings is available
through the NetApp Tech OnTap program. The NetApp Tech OnTap
program includes a monthly newsletter with real-world best
practices, tips and tools, behind the scenes engineering
interviews, and more. Sign up now at www.netapp.com/go/techontap.
About Network Appliance
Network Appliance is a leading provider of innovative data
management solutions that simplify the complexity of storing,
managing, protecting, and retaining enterprise data. Market leaders
around the world choose NetApp to help them reduce cost, minimise
risk, and adapt to change. For solutions that deliver unmatched
simplicity and value, visit us on the Web at www-au.netapp.com.
Network Appliance is a registered trademark of Network Appliance,
Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All other brands or products
are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders
and should be treated as such.
NetApp, the Network Appliance logo, SnapDrive, SnapMirror, and VFM
are registered trademarks and Network Appliance, Virtual File
Manager, ReplicatorX, and Snapshot are trademarks of Network
Appliance, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Microsoft,
Windows, and SharePoint are registered trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle
Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
Solaris is a trademark of Sun Microsystems. All other brands or
products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective holders and should be treated as such.
Press Contacts:
Mark Heers
Network Appliance
+61 2 9779 5623
Mark.heers@netapp.com
Rachel York
Max Australia
Tel: +61 2 9954 3492
Rachel.york@maxaustralia.com.au