UniTree to Announce Nearline Product at DW 2000

UniTree Software - specialists in high end Unix nearline data storage and management - will announce its new UniTree Database Near Line (UDNL) product on Stand 281 at Data Warehousing 2000 (Data Warehousing 2000 Conference & Exhibition, Olympia, November 8-9th).

With between 70 and 90% of data considered inactive on the average hard disk, UDNL gives data warehouse, data mining, and decision support system users the ability to transparently store large amounts of data on nearline storage - as opposed to adding costly disk storage.

"Nearline storage is typically only around 10% of the cost of hard disks, so cost savings can be dramatic," says Nigel Dear, European Director - Sales and Marketing. "UDNL can have a very big impact on the cost of storage and storage management in very large database and data warehouse environments."

"With the explosive growth of data and data warehouses, UDNL also allows users to easily grow their data warehouses to hundreds of gigabytes, terabytes and even petabytes of data at a cost of pennies per megabyte".

UDNL works by constantly monitoring data use and deciding - according to criteria stipulated by the user - which data should be moved to nearline storage. According to Bill Inmon, an independent data warehouse consultant in the USA, up to 90% or more of data is so infrequently used (e.g. not used within 90 days) that it is best removed from the hard disk and stored nearline, where it can be accessed quickly if required.

Users - typically systems or database administrators - can decide when their data becomes "inactive". It can be either side of 90 days, 30 days, 30 minutes or whatever the user specifies.

Inactive data is automatically and transparently moved from disk based storage to near line storage such as tape or optical. Data that has been moved to near line storage appears to be on-line and is quickly accessed by the warehouse on demand. UDNL is implemented at a level that makes the product compatible with virtually every type of database on the market today, including homegrown proprietary databases. In the initial release, UDNL has been tested and qualified with Oracle Corporation's 8i release and UniTree will qualify other databases as needed.

The transparent manner in which UDNL is implemented makes it easily deployable in a number of industries including e-commerce/internet, telecommunications, financial, direct marketing, etc. Also, UDNL fits well into specific applications such as billing, customer relationship management, mediation, database archiving, fraud analysis, decision support, etc.

Benefit summary

Nearline storage

• stores less active files or database transactions on tape or optical robotic libraries
• automatically manages the processes for migrating less active data from online to nearline
• can be used for storage of click stream data (e.g. customer information gained from Web site visits)
• in effect provides unlimited virtual storage

Nearline data retrieval is like online access. It saves time and money because data is never offline. Key benefits:

• A complete software solution for online, nearline and offline data and storage management
• Significant data management cost savings
• A more cost-effective alternative to expensive disk storage
• fast access to less active data because nearline storage automatically locates and restores data to online status in seconds

About UniTree Software

UniTree develops storage software solutions that cost-effectively manage growing volumes of data. UniTree supports multiple hardware platforms including Sun, SGI, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and Linux using a host of tape and optical libraries from companies including StorageTek, ADIC, HP, Exabyte, Sony and others.

UniTree's products are available through a network of OEMs, VARs, and Resellers. For a white paper on the UDNL and for more information on UniTree products, see www.unitree.com.

Contact Nigel Dear, UniTree Europe, nigel@unitree.com or Paul Whitehead, Western Associates PR, +44 (0)1428 641413, paul@western-pr.demon.co.uk.