"3PAR Utility Storage and the NetApp V-Series are an exciting combination. With this joint solution, we now have the ability to use these products together with total confidence," says Dan Grillo, Senior Director of Hosting at Ariba, Inc. "We believe the value in consolidating our storage environment with the simplicity and flexibility offered by this solution is tremendous."

3PAR Utility Storage represents a simple, efficient and massively scalable tiered-storage array for reliable block (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) data services. The InServ array is ideal for open systems storage consolidation, integrated data lifecycle management and performance-intensive applications. The NetApp V-Series delivers the proven data management capabilities of Data ONTAP® to heterogeneous storage environments via a flexible virtualization platform.

Joint customers have identified the dramatic reduction in storage capacity and management costs as the key benefit of the 3PAR and NetApp solution. Traditional datacenter infrastructures often consist of proliferating silos of block and file capacity. With this solution, both capacities can be reduced significantly through consolidation onto a single, massively scalable, tiered-storage pool. This storage pool is based on the 3PAR InServ Storage Server, with direct block access provided by 3PAR and file level access provided by the NetApp V-Series.

"When vendors listen, customers win," says Roger Cox, Research Vice President at Gartner. "The trend toward environments that supply a single, easily-scaled pool of capacity for multiple storage services promises greater cost-effectiveness for customers."

Brendon Howe, general manager of the NetApp V-Series, is equally satisfied with the collaboration. "We are pleased to team with 3PAR to offer greater choice to our mutual customers," says Howe. "The V-Series is the only virtualization platform on the market that enables customers to enjoy the powerful data management capabilities of Data ONTAP while allowing them to leverage the storage technologies offered by other leading array vendors."

David Scott, President and CEO of 3PAR, shares Howe's enthusiasm over the solution. "The customer-driven partnership with NetApp is aimed at bringing greater storage consolidation and management simplification in FC SAN, IP SAN and NAS environments," says Scott. "Our customers recognize that a single, highly virtualized storage pool for NAS- and block-level consolidation can deliver dramatic cost reductions and greater business agility."

Configuration and Pricing
The 3PAR/NetApp combined offering is supported with all 3PAR InServ models and all NetApp V6000 and V3000 models. The respective individual components of the solution are sold separately by each company. Pricing will vary depending on configuration.