Compaq and HighGround Systems Announce Strategic Partnership to Address Storage Market
Munich, December 6, 1999 ? Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ), the world's largest supplier of multi-user storage1, and HighGround© Systems, Inc., a leading provider of storage resource management software, today announced a wide ranging strategic partnership to address the exploding storage needs of eBusiness customers for the Year 2000 and beyond.
Compaq?s Enterprise Network Storage Architecture (ENSA) outlines deployment of distributed SANs as the basis for building storage utilities. This announcement further extends Compaq?s leadership in the open SAN market and establishes HighGround as a leading developer of storage resource management software for SAN environments. The resulting products and services will help customers manage the vast amount of data generated by the Web with improvements in application availability, management efficiency, and business growth planning for a higher return on storage investments. The solutions will also extend Compaq?s broad storage product family, which supports the most demanding NonStopâ eBusiness applications.
The partnership includes:
ú An agreement through which Compaq will use HighGround?s Web-engineered Storage Resource Manager? (SRM?) technology in Compaq storage management solutions as part of Compaq?s Intelligent Manageability strategy
ú Joint development agreements that will culminate in the delivery of SAN management ?appliances? and tight integration between HighGround?s SRM product family and Compaq?s system and storage management products such as the Web-engineered Compaq Insight Manager XE
ú A $20 million investment in HighGround by Compaq
Increased Customer Benefits
?Today?s announcement with HighGround helps Compaq further establish itself as the leader in enterprise storage,? said Ian Whiting, Director, Storage Products Group, EMEA. ?Working across the network, storage managers must be able to efficiently allocate, configure, backup, and administer the vast amount of storage distributed throughout the enterprise. They need a virtual presence to their servers and storage. As part of our ENSA vision, HighGround?s SRM technology will be key to helping our customers manage and optimise their business-critical storage resources from any location.?
?This is great news for our customers, and because our customers will win, it?s inevitable that HighGround and Compaq will win,? says Dennis Grant, President and CEO at HighGround. ?The storage market is at a crossroads, and customers are evaluating new architectures like SAN to satisfy their growing eBusiness requirements. Our partnership with Compaq will enable us expand our Storage Resource Manager family in many different directions, and add the management features customers need to ensure application availability no matter which storage architecture they choose.?
Expanding the ENSA Vision with Storage Resource Management
Today?s announcement between Compaq and HighGround will enable organisations to solve the storage-related IT challenges they face today and tomorrow.
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Compaq, which offers a full range of storage solutions for the enterprise, sees
storage as a utility service on the network, like electricity or water. This storage utility, based on Compaq?s Enterprise Network Storage Architecture (ENSA), offers unbounded performance and capacity to every application environment through the network.
Compaq will include HighGround?s SRM technology in Compaq storage solutions, providing customers with central reporting and analysis of network storage resources. HighGround?s SRM product family collects hundreds of key storage capacity, utilisation, and availability statistics from distributed disks, partitions, file systems, and Microsoft Exchange information stores. It then alerts users on critical storage stress points, produces network-wide views of the enterprise storage topology, and delivers out-of-the-box reports, charts, and trends that can be accessed through common Web browsers. SRM's ability to analyse storage from the application perspective, independent of the physical storage subsystem, will enable Compaq to extend its lead in open storage solutions.
The SRM family includes operating system support for Windows NT, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, and Red Hat Linux, and will support OpenVMS and Tru64 UNIX. The SRM family also includes an application module for Microsoft© Exchange©.
Compaq plans to provide customers with a virtual presence to their technology from anywhere via a Web browser. SRM complements Compaq?s Intelligent Manageability strategy with an architecture that will facilitate integration with Compaq Insight Manager XE. Compaq and HighGround will work together to integrate SRM with Compaq Insight Manager XE and the Compaq StorageWorks Command Console. This will create the industry's first storage resource management solution to provide customers with end-to-end views of the storage resource "stack," and enables them to easily understand the complex relationships between application storage and physical storage subsystems. Compaq and HighGround will also collaborate on SAN management appliances that ensure manageability, availability, and performance of complex SAN topologies.
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About HighGround
HighGround Systems, based in Marlborough, MA, is a leading provider of storage resource management software that ensures cost-effective, continuous, and efficient eBusiness operations. HighGround Storage Resource Manager, the industry-leading network storage reporting and analysis solution, is used by IT organisations worldwide to manage the availability of critical Windows NT, UNIX, and Microsoft Exchange application storage. HighGround can be reached at 508-460-5152; via e-mail at info@highground.com; or via the World Wide Web at highground.com.
About Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation, a Fortune Global 100 company, is the second largest computer company in the world and the largest global supplier of computer systems. Compaq develops and markets hardware, software, solutions, and services, including industry-leading enterprise computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, networking and communication products, commercial desktop and portable products, and consumer PCs. The company is an industry leader in environmentally friendly programs and business practices. Compaq products are sold and supported in more than 100 countries through a network of authorised Compaq marketing partners. Customer support and information about Compaq and its products are available at compaq.com.
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