Data General's CLARiiON Storage Division Unveils Industry's First Full Fibre Channel Storage Area Network Solution
WESTBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 18, 1999--
Introduces High-Speed SANbackup Solution CLARiiON:
'THE Storage Alternative'
At a press conference today from its corporate headquarters, Data
General Corporation's CLARiiON Storage Division unveiled its strategy
to provide the industry's first family of full Fibre Channel-based
Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions.
The first open SAN product, CLARiiON SANbackup, which is
available immediately, allows an organization to move its
mission-critical data from disk to tape without impacting its
enterprise network. Data General is the first storage vendor to ship
this level of complete, end-to-end Fibre Channel SAN solution,
uniquely solving large-scale NT server backup problems.
In addition, the company outlined an aggressive roadmap that
delivers open SAN solutions, including CLARiiON multi-host shared
storage, over the course of this calendar year. These SAN solutions
will allow organizations to share data stored on CLARiiON full Fibre
Channel arrays in multi-server platform environments, including
Windows NT and UNIX.
"As the only major storage vendor currently shipping full
end-to-end Fibre Channel based storage systems, Data General is the
leader in this technology which is the enabling architecture for the
deployment of storage area networks," said Ron Skates, president and
chief executive officer of Data General.
"Our goal is to become the premier supplier of storage area
networking solutions," added Mr. Skates. "To accomplish that, we are
embarking on an aggressive program that includes rapidly expanding our
CLARiiON direct sales force, providing extensive professional services
and continuing our ambitious CLARiiON SAN development schedule."
In addition, Data General has launched a major marketing effort
to position CLARiiON as "THE Storage Alternative." The program
highlights the strong positioning CLARiiON has against server vendors
who are focused on protecting their installed bases; smaller niche
"boutique" vendors who cannot offer the breadth of product and
services provided by Data General; and the monolithic "big box"
vendors who sell more expensive, inflexible storage solutions based on
proprietary architectures.
"The CLARiiON SAN initiative launched today is the logical
next-step in the evolution that we began two years ago when CLARiiON
shipped the industry's first full Fibre Channel storage products,"
said Joel Schwartz, senior vice president and general manager of the
CLARiiON Advanced Storage Division of Data General. "By anticipating
this next wave of storage interconnect, we have put the strategic
elements of our business model in place to catapult CLARiiON into an
early lead in what is now the most compelling trend in the industry
today - the Storage Area Network."
"The Open Systems SAN market will exceed $6 billion in 2001, as
companies look for new and better ways to manage, protect, access, and
share their stored data," said John McArthur, Program Director,
Storage Systems Research, IDC. "Fibre Channel technology is a key
building block in the SAN market, and Data General CLARiiON is a
pioneer of full Fibre Channel storage solutions. Its early investments
in full Fibre Channel storage are paying off, as its customers embrace
SAN solutions."
CLARiiON SANbackup - The First in a Series
Developed as a high-speed, open storage network solution,
CLARiiON SANbackup enables users to free up valuable client/server LAN
resources from data backup and refocus these resources on business
critical applications. CLARiiON SANbackup is the first and only LAN-
free backup and recovery solution that takes full advantage of
Internet Protocol (IP) over Fibre Channel, providing file level backup
and recovery simultaneously to all servers in an enterprise.
CLARiiON SANbackup, which includes the Legato NetWorker data
protection product suite, will provide customers with increased
performance and will reduce the high cost of managing dispersed backup
and recovery implementations by leveraging the Fibre Channel interface
to achieve greater scalability and centralized management of data.
With CLARiiON SANbackup, the addition of clients is simplified by the
Fibre Channel connectivity and the management of the backup is
centralized through SANbackup solutions. CLARiiON will continue to
evolve the SANbackup solution providing investment protection and new
server functionality, such as server-less backup. By not having the
server in the data path, customers gain backup speeds exceeding one
terabyte per hour.
"CLARiiON SANbackup offers both UNIX and NT environments
significant scalability and performance advantages for back-up
operations - clearly demonstrating the positive economic impact that
open SANs bring to today's open networked enterprise environments,"
added Joanne Masingill, vice president of marketing for CLARiiON.
Louis C. Cole, president and CEO of Legato Systems, adds, "We're
very pleased to be working with CLARiiON on developing innovative SAN
data protection products. Data General's CLARiiON SANbackup solution,
utilizing Legato NetWorker and future technologies, will provide our
customers with advanced data movement and protection capabilities that
take maximum advantage of new SAN infrastructures. It's alliances like
ours that are enabling customers to realize the promise of SAN
technology."
Christopher Yetman, Director of Customer Services Delivery at GTE
Internetworking, said, "Over the next 6 to 8 months we will purchase
over one terabyte of CLARiiON storage and backing that up can be a
challenge. We are very much looking forward to having SANs help us
solve that backup problem."
Leveraging core CLARiiON technology as well as proven products
from key strategic partners, CLARiiON SANbackup delivers a solution
for establishing a solid SAN infrastructure by bringing together key
components, as a system. These components include:
-- Backup NT Server- size of this dedicated NT server is
determined by the number of clients and amount of data to be backed
up.
-- Tape Library - size is based on the total disk capacity being
managed and the operation's back-up policy.
-- Back up Software - open back up software applications,
provided by Legato Systems includes Legato Networker Power Edition
v5.5 and database modules for Oracle, SQL and Microsoft Exchange;
-- Disk Storage for Back-up Application - includes dedicated
storage for back-up application use;
-- Hub Connectors - used to configure CLARiiON SANbackup with its
host clients.
About Data General CLARiiON
With its CLARiiON family, Data General Corporation (NYSE: DGN) is
the first major vendor to ship end-to-end Fibre Channel disk arrays,
the foundation for deployment of Storage Area Networks (SANs). Having
shipped more than 100,000 CLARiiON disk arrays and over 7 petabytes
(7,000 terabytes) of usable RAID-protected storage, Data General is
recognized as the world's leading storage supplier to OEMs.
High-availability solutions, provided through resellers and direct to
end users, feature flexible, scalable products for Windows NT and UNIX
platforms. They include full Fibre Channel and SCSI disk arrays and
Navisphere(R) storage management software.
Data General, which is based in Westborough, Massachusetts, is a
major supplier of storage and enterprise computing solutions for
customers worldwide. In addition to CLARiiON Fibre Channel storage
systems, the company's products include high-end NT and UNIX-based
AViiON servers, and related software and services. The company
reported fiscal 1998 revenues of $1.5 billion. Additional information
on the company, its products, and services is available on the
Internet at www.dg.com. More information on CLARiiON technology and
products can be accessed on the Internet at www.clariion.com.
CLARiiON, AViiON and Navisphere are registered trademarks of Data
General Corporation. All other brand and product names referenced in
this press release are trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective holders
CLARiiON backgrounder
The CLARiiON SAN Roadmap
An early Data General commitment to full Fibre Channel RAID
arrays was based on success in delivering high availability external
RAID arrays into the open systems market and the opportunity to design
a new family of modular arrays based on Fibre Channel technology. With
Fibre Channel becoming the de facto industry standard for storage
interconnects and the foundation for Storage Area Networking, Data
General is very well positioned with a mature, volume tested, industry
leading family of "SAN Ready" storage solutions - the CLARiiON FC5000
product family.
SANs - The Intersection of Revolution and Evolution
Storage management and storage applications are a natural first
step in the SAN evolution. End users are longing for better ways to
deploy and manage storage as a separate and strategic asset in there
IT infrastructure, while backup continues to be a significant concern.
The delivery of more efficient and reliable solutions for successfully
accomplishing backup and restore operations is a major win for end
users. CLARiiON SANbackup frees up LAN resources and consolidates
backup, employing storage area networking as an efficient and reliable
solution. The emerging infrastructure has an increasing value for end
users as the IT enterprise grows, with the future delivery of new
storage applications and SAN functionality that leverage initial
investments in storage deployment, management and backup.
Shared storage - Virtual Arrays
The next significant SAN deliverable from Data General will be
the ability to share CLARiiON arrays, or multiple arrays, among
heterogeneous server environments - UNIX and NT. As CLARiiON arrays
become more powerful and scalable, sharing storage and enabling data
migration applications is another major win for end users. Today's
CLARiiON full Fibre Channel, high availability, enterprise class
arrays can easily scale to multiple terabytes in a single array.
Sharing the values of this industry leading storage solution among
diversified server/application loads delivers the best performance and
application service at very competitive costs to the end user.
Additionally, the ability to manage storage as a separate and
independent asset provides new levels of flexibility in enterprise IT
management.
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