Features - Storage Innovations:

VIEO DEMOS InfiniBand-BASED COMMERCIAL SOLUTIONS

VIEO Inc, a leader in Adaptive Application Infrastructure Management (AAIM), VIEO's partners, IT decision-makers, press, and analysts gathered at VIEO's AAIM Demonstration Center on Wednesday, August 28th for presentations and a demonstration of commercial-grade enterprise applications running in an InfiniBand data center. VIEO's AAIM Demonstration Center was built to showcase the company's AAIM solution that leverages InfiniBand technology to deliver unprecedented new systems management capabilities. The new center provided the multi-vendor n-tiered ecosystem required for the industry's foremost technology vendors to demonstrate how their solutions will provide superior performance, scalability, manageability, and operational cost savings for data centers in the future. Participating vendors included BMC Software, CATC, Ciprico, CSS Laboratories, Dell, Divergenet, Gore, HP, IBM, InfiniFast, InfiniSwitch, Intel, Mellanox Technologies, Network Appliance, Paceline Systems, RedSwitch, SBS Technologies, and others.

"This week, the InfiniBand community revealed the strength of momentum that has been rapidly building behind the scenes," said Bob Fabbio, CEO and president of VIEO. "We are very proud to have put together this real-world demonstration using only VIEO management and application-enabling software. And we can now confirm that enterprise applications developed for conventional environments can run unchanged over InfiniBand. We look forward to the next VIEO Demo Week later this year when we will demonstrate the remarkable application performance benefits offered by InfiniBand and the new management capabilities provided by VIEO's AAIM solution."

Highlights of VIEO's Demo event included:

• A presentation by industry analyst Jamie Gruener of The Yankee Group who shared the 8 critical success factors for InfiniBand in the data center which included: cost effectiveness, high profile, high performance, ease of deployment, and others. Gruener commented, "There's a lot of talk about the merits of InfiniBand but the proof is in the pudding. Demonstrations like the one held in VIEO's AAIM Demonstration Center show real enterprise applications running in a real InfiniBand data center. This should provide a shot in the arm for InfiniBand."
• An InfiniBand solutions demonstration that featured clustered IBM DB2 database software, IBM WebSphere Application Server, and mySAP running in a Linux environment enabled with commercially available data transport and fabric management software from a single vendor -- VIEO.
• An InfiniBand tutorial and white paper from VIEO's Dr. Alfred Hartmann that introduced IT professionals who are responsible for large corporate data centers to InfiniBand concepts and the benefits InfiniBand will provide to the new dynamic data center.
• And finally, a roundtable dinner during which participants provided insight on key issues facing the technology industry and data center professionals.

During the event, participants were given a tour of VIEO's state-of-the-art InfiniBand data center that featured products from 22 VIEO partners and other vendors. Many expressed their interest in the use of InfiniBand as a solution to today's economic imperative to do more with less.

"At Collective Technologies, we provide infrastructure management services for data centers that are grappling with increased application performance demands with reduced budget and staff. They are all trying to do more with less these days and InfiniBand appears to have tremendous potential within these environments," said Ed Taylor, CEO of Collective Technologies.

"InfiniBand is the best solution available today for enabling data centers to improve performance while lowering total cost of ownership," said Bill Toscano, vice president of business development for RedSwitch Inc. "RedSwitch is pleased to have participated in VIEO Demo Week and prove again to the market the viability of InfiniBand as a total solution for enterprise systems."

"Paceline believes permanent InfiniBand application centers, like VIEO's AAIM Demonstration Center, provide end-users with a valuable tool to validate the performance and ease of management benefits delivered by InfiniBand technology," said John Hanratty, vice president of marketing for Paceline Systems. "As a leading InfiniBand switch developer, Paceline is committed to work with all InfiniBand vendors to provide interoperable, end-to-end solutions that improve performance and lower data center connectivity costs."

"The successful deployment of InfiniBand is being made possible through the introduction of software that is interoperable with complementary InfiniBand products from hardware vendors and solution providers," said Jim Bowers, manager for InfiniBand and SRAM products for IBM Microelectronics Division. "InfiniBand software providers like VIEO will be instrumental in realizing the benefits of InfiniBand in the data center."

"Mellanox is pleased to have been a part of VIEO's multi-vendor demonstration of InfiniBand-based enterprise applications," said Kevin Deierling, vice president of product marketing for Mellanox Technologies. "VIEO's AAIM solution is an excellent example of using InfiniBand's ultra low latency hardware transport and quality of service (QoS) capabilities to deliver QoS at the application level. This in turn makes it straightforward for IT managers to fine tune enterprise data center applications to take advantage of 10Gb/s InfiniBand performance."

"InfiniSwitch was pleased to play a role in VIEO's multi-vendor InfiniBand demonstration," said Jean Hoxie-Wasko, vice president of marketing at InfiniSwitch Corporation. "Successfully running applications in a real-world InfiniBand data center showed yet again InfiniBand's ability to help enterprise customers realize improved server and storage system performance."

The VIEO AAIM Demonstration Center was opened to showcase VIEO's application of InfiniBand to deliver its AAIM solution, a next generation systems management offering that will allow enterprises for the first time to ensure business-critical application certainty by cost-effectively measuring, analyzing, and affecting application dedicated resources as a single computer. VIEO's AAIM solution, delivered on an innovative management appliance, is a leading example of an embedded application of InfiniBand that exploits the I/O technology's high bandwidth, low latency and quality of service management features.

About VIEO

VIEO is a leader in Adaptive Application Infrastructure Management (AAIM) delivering a new class of systems management solution designed to increase Application Quality of Service (AQoS) in order to ensure business objectives are achieved. VIEO's next-generation solution, delivered on a management appliance, is designed to ensure business-critical application certainty by empowering organizations to cost-effectively measure, analyze, and affect application-dedicated resources as a single computer. With this AAIM solution, the management of application environments now shifts from a tactical investment focused on technical issues to a strategic investment that optimizes business results. VIEO is a founding member of the Open Group Interconnect Software Consortium and a contributing member of the Distributed Management Task Force, the InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) and other leading standards bodies. Based in Austin, Texas, VIEO customers include AMD, BMC Software, IBM, InfiniSwitch, Mellanox Technologies, Network Appliance, Paceline Systems, RedSwitch, Topspin, and others. On the net: VIEO Website www.vieo.com.

Contact: VIEO Inc, Pam O'Neal Mickelson, 512-257-3031x306, poneal@vieo.com.