Features - Storage Innovations:

StorageTek CHANGES THE ECONOMICS OF INFORMATION STORAGE

StorageTek has come out of nowhere to take the enterprise disk market to a new level. Say hello to BladeStore.

StorageTek (Storage Technology Corp), a storage services and solutions expert, has launched a groundbreaking disk subsystem aimed at making online data storage a more cost effective option for businesses with high volumes of essential information. StorageTek's Intelligent BladeStore Architecture makes it possible for companies to cost-effectively protect business critical information as well as provide fast access to fixed content information.

"The hottest part of the disk array market is happening in the ATA-based area because of falling prices," said Tom Major, vice president and general manager, Disk Business Unit. "For too many years, the decision to store data online has been driven by economics or limited choices rather than data characteristics."

Today, having the right information available online can make the difference between business success and failure. This means it is vital for companies to ensure their data is protected and available at all times.

"The introduction of the BladeStore disk subsystem means that businesses can now choose the right disk system for the task and make their IT budgets go farther and access their information rapidly," Major said.

StorageTek's innovative Intelligent BladeStore Architecture delivers the ability to store large quantities of data in a small footprint. It combines low-cost ATA disk drives for data storage and the performance and reliability of an enterprise class Fibre-Channel disk system. The combination makes the BladeStore disk subsystem ideal for storing online high volume fixed content data -- such as video, email, documents or medical images. Additionally, BladeStore is well suited for a data protection environment, such as data replication and backup and recovery.

"We know data center managers need and want a tool to rapidly back up and restore high-availability information," said Major. "BladeStore is at the heart of data protection and business continuity planning they need. We also are finding that BladeStore is gaining broad support from key technology and solutions partners."

ATA disk-based storage systems are emerging from the data storage industry. However, StorageTek's BladeStore disk subsystem has moved to the head of the class by delivering storage density advantages and the performance, flexibility and manageability benefits to customers with enterprise open systems environments.

"StorageTek's BladeStore disk subsystem doesn't just change the economics of where data can be stored," said Paul Carr, StorageTek director of product marketing, Disk Business, Europe, Africa and Middle East. "There are huge benefits to customers' disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

"All data is not created equal -- some needs to be accessed more quickly and frequently than other data -- so it is important for companies to prioritize retrieval of their information assets," he said. "The best solution is often a combination of online, nearline and offline storage tailored to fit the individual needs of the customer. Storing critical information using the BladeStore disk subsystem means that high volumes of data can be backed up quickly and reliably, and recovered rapidly, at a very advantageous cost."

Arun Taneja, senior analyst with Enterprise Storage Group, said, "I expect ATA disk-based storage systems, ruggedized for the enterprise environment, to play a major role in the upcoming disk-to-disk and disk-to-disk-to-tape data protection schemes, and for general purpose secondary storage. Prices and reliability are now at a point where it makes economical sense to deploy disk systems for storing Reference Information online and to reduce recovery times by an order of magnitude. BladeStore seems to be well positioned to become a foundation product for STK as it builds these solutions.

Availability

StorageTek's BladeStore disk subsystem will be available in November 2002.

About BladeStore

StorageTek's BladeStore disk subsystem forms part of StorageTek's range of tailored data protection solutions, designed to ensure that companies always have timely access to their information assets.

The BladeStore disk subsystem scales from 4TB to 160TB in capacity. A single BladeStore disk array contains up to 10 high capacity storage blades based on ATA disk drives, associated control electronics, and Fibre-Channel interface. BladeStore has a high-performance intelligent array controller which provides 2Gb host-side connectivity to support direct attach or storage area network (SAN) implementations. BladeStore Storage Management Software provides a powerful, yet simple management interface.

About StorageTek

StorageTek, a $2 billion worldwide company with headquarters in Louisville, Colorado, delivers a broad range of storage solutions for digitized data. StorageTek solutions are easy to manage and allow universal access to data across servers, media types and storage networks. StorageTek is an innovator and global leader in virtual storage solutions for tape automation, disk storage systems and storage networking and is a voting member of the SNIA. Because of StorageTek, customers can manage and leverage their digital assets as their businesses grow and can maximize IT productivity to ensure enterprise-class business continuity. For more information, see www.storagetek.com, or call 800-786-7835.