Both Barrels Communications Ltd

FalconStor and STORDIS GmbH, a European distributor for high performance computing, today announced a partnership to create an InfiniBand-based storage appliance for the high performance computing market. The appliance, running FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS), will be demonstrated for the first time today, at STORDIS and FalconStor’s shared booth (#705) at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), Europe’s leading conference and exhibition for high performance computing, networking and storage.

The new appliance is based on high quality InfiniBand Director switches, which enable high performance applications to run on distributed server, storage and network resources. Multiple Director switches can be interconnected to form very large, high-performance clusters and grids that can grow into the thousands of nodes with ‘pay as you grow’ scalability and bandwidth.

Customers can leverage FalconStor NSS with these clusters and grids to implement an ultra-high performance storage network with storage virtualization, provisioning and management across multiple disk arrays, operating at speeds far in excess of anything achievable with Fibre Channel, and at significantly lower costs.

“FalconStor solutions in conjunction with InfiniBand-based switching can reduce the overall complexities and costs associated with a dynamic storage environment, providing customers with new levels of performance at a price point they might have believed it impossible to make,” said Guillaume Imberti, FalconStor president and general manager EMEA Operations.

“We expect this innovative combination to be very attractive to our mutual customers, many of whom demand the fastest possible performance from their storage environments in order to give themselves the greatest possible competitive advantage in their own business sector,” said Alexander Jeffries, managing director of STORDIS.

See the appliance at booth #705, International Supercomputing Conference, Hamburg, Germany, June 23rd-26th 2009.

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About FalconStor NSS
FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS) delivers TOTALLY Open™ SAN storage virtualization, provisioning, and heterogeneous storage management that works across disk vendor and storage protocol boundaries to optimize storage utilization, reduce costs, and increase IT productivity in enterprise organizations.

About STORDIS GmbH
STORDIS, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, is the European Distributor for High Performance Computing (HPC) with focus on High Performance Networking and Storage solutions. Our HPC and Storage portfolio includes InfiniBand, 10Gbit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, HPC storage, general purpose storage and storage virtualization products. Additional to our product portfolio, we are providing a wide range of high quality pre- and post-sales services and support options.

FalconStor today announced its collaboration with China-based H3C Technologies and Starline Computer GmbH for European distribution of a high-performance line of storage appliances based on H3C hardware and FalconStor software.

H3C specializes in the provision of IP-based products and solutions for networking, security, storage and video surveillance. Through its partnership with H3C, which already sells FalconStor-based storage appliances in Asia, and a new distribution agreement with Starline, FalconStor initially will introduce the NSS HC6XX line of multiprotocol storage systems into Europe.

“By leveraging our partnership with both H3C and Starline, we can bring to the European market a promising new line of storage solutions for the SMB as well as the enterprise market,” said Guillaume Imberti, vice president and general manager of EMEA operations for FalconStor Software.

“We are pleased to expand the distribution of our FalconStor-based storage appliances into Europe,” said Arthur Lee, president of storage product line at H3C. “Building on an already successful relationship with FalconStor, we have the opportunity to develop a complete family of storage virtualization and data protection appliances for international markets.”

The NSS HC6XX family offers four models, including two entry-level iSCSI-based storage arrays, an advanced multiprotocol system offering both iSCSI and Fibre Channel, and a high-performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet storage array.

The NSS HC6XX family of storage arrays features FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) intelligence and advanced features, including storage virtualization, thin provisioning, synchronous data mirroring, optimized replication, application-aware snapshots, and other enterprise-class capabilities. The new H3C/FalconStor storage systems will be distributed by Starline Computer and sold by FalconStor’s network of channel partners throughout Europe.

In addition to FalconStor NSS and the new H3C appliances, Starline will distribute FalconStor’s complete line of data protection software, including FalconStor Continuous Data Protector™ (CDP) and FalconStor Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with Deduplication. In the future, the H3C/FalconStor-based appliances will be available as CDP, VTL, and Data Deduplication systems.

“With the addition of FalconStor’s enterprise-class data protection solutions and the new H3C-based storage appliances to our portfolio, we can target the growing market for high-performance and high-availability storage solutions,” said Bernd Widmaier, sales director of Kirchheim/Teck-based Starline Computer.

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About Starline
Starline Computer GmbH has 25 years of professional experience in the storage area, in which it is increasingly specializing. Initially one of the first providers in the area of RAID systems, Starline is now a leader in this field. Starline offers total solutions such as storage area networks (SAN), RAID sub-systems and controllers, network-attached storage (NAS), IP storage, tape libraries and autoloaders, storage switches, backup software, HBAs and others.

About H3C
Part of 3Com Corporation, H3C is a leading global supplier of IP-based products and solutions. H3C provides a full portfolio of end-to-end networking solutions including switches, routers, network security systems, IP storage, IP surveillance, and voice-and-video-over-IP products. As an innovative IP-based network architecture solutions provider, H3C aims to create maximum value for its global customers and partners by providing excellent service and quality products with a high performance-to-cost ratio.

Based in China, with research and development centers in Beijing, Hangzhou and Shenzhen, the company employs 4,800 people with more than half engaged in R&D.

Global alliance provides real-time storage migration for virtual machines, efficient thin provisioning of disk resources, and application-centric data protection/recovery

FalconStor Software and Virtual Iron Software today announced a global strategic alliance to offer integrated storage and server virtualisation solutions to maximise IT productivity and business continuity for organisations of all sizes.

The combined solutions improve data centre resource management by increasing the use of existing physical resources, optimising virtual infrastructure performance through real-time data migration, and delivering more cost-effective and reliable high availability and disaster recovery. The companies will collaborate on marketing, sales, product integration and cross-support to OEM and reseller partners worldwide.

“The combination of Virtual Iron and FalconStor delivers comprehensive and easy to use virtual infrastructure and data protection capabilities,” said Mike Kelson, Technical Director at Atlanta Technology Ltd., a UK-based hosted service provider. “Virtual Iron’s LiveMigration provides transparent virtual machine mobility that allows us to perform no-downtime maintenance. FalconStor’s equivalent storage migration capabilities allow simple and seamless movement of virtual machines between storage platforms. The combined efficiencies and advantages translate directly into increased flexibility and better performance for our customers.”

The alliance between the companies leverages the entire suite of Virtual Iron server virtualisation and FalconStor data protection and storage virtualisation solutions without modification, providing a three-pronged approach to creating a centralised virtual infrastructure with integrated solutions for business continuity and disaster recovery, backup optimisation and storage virtualisation.

The FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) and FalconStor® Continuous Data Protector (CDP) support both iSCSI and Fibre Channel storage and have been certified on the latest release of Virtual Iron, Version 4.2. The FalconStor solutions provide a number of unique capabilities for the Virtual Iron platform including:

• Storage Migration for Virtual Machines – virtualisation combined with built-in mirroring allows seamless migration between storage arrays without downtime.
• Extended support for a wide range of SMB and enterprise-class storage arrays already certified by FalconStor.
• Application-aware snapshot agents provide transactionally-consistent snapshots of data for Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, SAP, and Oracle running in virtual machines.
• Thin provisioning for virtual machines maximises disk space to optimise storage management within virtualised environments.

These capabilities allow Virtual Iron customers to take a storage-vendor agnostic approach to virtualise and provision storage resources for virtual machines. In addition to improving data centre resource utilisation, the FalconStor software optimises the management of virtual infrastructure through real-time data migration, application-centric delta snapshots, rapid data recovery and optimised replication to support disaster recovery.

Virtual Iron’s unique storage architecture allows storage and server IT users to fully exploit the value provided in storage servers provided by their storage system vendors. Standard capabilities in FalconStor software such as thin provisioning and application-aware snapshots can be directly used with Virtual Iron, significantly improving storage utilisation and business continuity across any existing storage system vendor array.

“The server virtualisation market is red hot and gaining rapid adoption as organisations strive to achieve physical server consolidation, maximise resource utilisation and deploy disaster recovery solutions,” said Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “In a recent survey of current and planned virtualisation users, ESG discovered the importance of networked storage as 86% of the respondents that have implemented server virtualisation use some form of networked storage to support their infrastructure requirements. The combination of capabilities from Virtual Iron and FalconStor will help customers streamline virtual infrastructure deployments, improve overall resource utilisation and implement robust business continuity solutions.”

Virtual Iron provides easy-to-use, enterprise-class server virtualisation capabilities on a next-generation architecture. The platform combines the latest version of the Xen® open source hypervisor with advanced virtualisation services and policy-based automation capabilities such as LiveMigrate™ for easy movement of workloads, LiveRecovery™ for automated virtual machine failover, LiveCapacity® for dynamic workload balancing, and LiveSnapshot™ for hot backup and patch management. These capabilities enable offloaded, space efficient and no-downtime backups on live virtual machines running in production environments. Virtual Iron also takes full advantage of the latest hardware virtualisation extensions from AMD and Intel to deliver near-native performance.

Truphone today announced a worldwide agreement with eXpansys that, later this year, will see the world’s largest independent online retailer of mobile phone handsets and accessories pre-install a VoIP service powered by Truphone on all compatible handsets sold through its online stores. The agreement applies in the UK, USA, Eire, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Hong Kong and Australia.

Additional service details will be published at time of launch.

Quotes
Chris Isaacs, Truphone’s business development director, said:

• “This agreement indicates that Truphone is set to be the co-brand partner of choice for MVNOs and others wishing to provide a seamless VoIP experience to their customers.”

• “It will be especially good news in markets such as the USA where handsets are routinely locked down by the operators; now, customers there that buy unlocked handsets from Mobile Planet [eXpansys' online store in for USA] will have the opportunity to try VoIP as it’s meant to be.”

Additional resources and links

• Truphone main website
• Picture: Chris Isaacs, Truphone business development director
• Picture: making a Truphone call on a smartphone
• Truphone videos
• Truphone press office for all prior news releases
• Truphone’s Facebook group: be first to receive Truphone news

Small- to-large-size enterprises can now easily deploy advanced Virtual Tape Library and Continuous Data Protection solutions

FalconStor Software and V2 Electronics today announced a new range of storage appliances based on V2’s portfolio of hardware platforms and FalconStor’s sophisticated, award-winning data protection solutions. By bundling specific FalconStor data protection functionality with V2’s long-established hardware and pre-certifying each combination, V2 and FalconStor are simplifying the deployment of advanced, enterprise-level data protection solutions. The certified V2 data protection solutions will be available from V2 Electronics across Europe.

Initially three specific solutions from FalconStor’s IPStor® platform have been bundled with V2 hardware: FalconStor VirtualTape Library (VTL), FalconStor Continuous Data Protection (CDP), and FalconStor Network Storage System (NSS). All three types of appliances will come in five models: from the entry-level 110 for small satellite offices, to the 210 and the 220, which offer built-in storage capacity, to the 310 and the 350, for the SME and enterprise data centres/head offices, for attachment to existing or new external storage devices.

Paul Hickingbotham, Solutions Manager, V2, said: “Resellers will welcome the ease of specification, pricing, and deployment of the new V2/FalconStor appliances, which will enable a cleaner, more efficient, transparent sales process both for the reseller and the customer. FalconStor has an outstanding track record and a great reputation for delivering advanced data protection services via specialised appliances,” he added. “We believe our customers will welcome the opportunity to acquire such advanced software on hardware platforms they’ve grown to know and trust for more than a decade.”

John Woolley, sales manager for Cristie Data Products, a FalconStor partner in the UK with experience in deploying both appliance-based solutions and separate hardware/software solutions, said: “Bespoke software solutions often require a ground-up design, which consumes time and other resources – ours, Hammer’s and FalconStor’s. The availability of pre-certified appliances as specific components of a bigger solution simplifies the sales process considerably, right from having standard data sheets and pricing information available through to the post-sales support requirement.”

Belgian integrator Comparex is one of the first resellers to take delivery of one of the new appliances, on behalf of its customer Mutualités Socialistes du Hainaut Occidental. Lieven De Smedt, Chief Executive Officer, Comparex Belgium, said: “Customers want to buy predictability and reliability as well as functionality. This is a great advantage of these certified appliances.”

Danielle Gauthier, Vice President of Marketing, FalconStor EMEA, said: “In increasingly complex IT environments, it is a huge advantage for IT managers to be able to install data protection solutions that are tried, trusted, and the most advanced of their kind. A solution such as this one, combining top-notch software and hardware, is the result of strategic collaboration, testing, and development. For customers, the cross-certification of V2 hardware with FalconStor software results in a compelling package of advanced data protection services that is easy to implement and simple to manage.”

All future revisions and software upgrades to either FalconStor software or V2 hardware will automatically result in a recertification process, to ensure long-term, ongoing, issue-free data protection deployments.

About V2
V2 Electronics is a division of the leading, storage-focused Hammer group of companies. V2 was formed over 10 years ago to fill the gap in custom production of high-quality, technology-led storage and server solutions, V2 now provides a proven range of solutions for specific business applications and the digital consumer. V2 solutions feature technologies from the leading storage brands, build quality from an award-winning production facility, and comprehensive warranties – all ensuring a confident solution choice.

About FalconStor Software, Inc.
For more information click here.

Partner program targets increased profitability and growth for solution providers. Includes new certification program for complete line of data protection solutions and proactive lead management

FalconStor Software today announced major enhancements to its EMEA Solution Provider Program. The enhancements focus on increasing partner enablement: providing solution providers with a new certification program, joint marketing initiatives, and new sales rebates to increase profitability and growth with FalconStor.

FalconStor’s first certification program will certify partners on its market-leading VirtualTape Library, Continuous Data Protection and complete line of disk-based data protection solutions. Certification will enhance end user’s confidence in the partner’s ability to sell, design and install FalconStor data protection solutions. In turn, increased training will allow FalconStor partners to offer professional services based on FalconStor’s solutions, enhancing customer satisfaction. FalconStor has invested in this important program by expanding its training staff and integrating state-of-the-art training methodologies and delivery systems.

FalconStor will also offer more proactive lead management. In the last few months the company has invested in new lead generation campaigns with the objective of providing more qualified leads tailored to the partners.

“FalconStor is a channel-focused company. It’s imperative we make it easy for our solution provider partners to succeed with FalconStor, so we constantly listen and adapt our practices to develop a program that helps them become more successful,” said Danielle Gauthier, FalconStor Vice President, EMEA Marketing. “To generate growth for FalconStor and exceed the requirements of solution providers in the dynamic storage marketplace, we are delivering new tools, incentives, and program features to address a wide range of partner needs at all levels.”

“As a channel-based company, FalconStor has taken care to design a program to ensure its partners’ success,” said John Woolley, Sales Director at Cristie, a FalconStor partner in the UK. “Its training and education programs enable us to effectively position their software solutions to our customers and help us to drive profitable hardware sales. Overall, the company’s model and programs make it easy for us to lead with FalconStor.”

“When it comes to storage solutions, we rely on FalconStor not only for its superior technology, but also for its commitment to partnership,” said Steve Whitfield, Sales Director at Intercept IT. “The partner program is structured to ensure not only our profitability, but also our clients’ success: the program helps us add value to our clients, has strategic sales and marketing initiatives and channel-dedicated sales and consulting resources.”

The new partner program provides FalconStor’s solution provider partners with the keys to growing their businesses and increasing sales. From its inception, FalconStor has believed in a channel-only sales strategy and has designed its programs on the basis of its deep channel expertise. In the USA, the program has been recognized two years in a row as a VARBusiness 5-Star Business Partner Program and the additions keep the company at the forefront in reseller-focused strategies for success.

“The worldwide enhancements to the FalconStor Solution Provider Partner Program show our commitment to partners and recognize the great work our resellers do in connecting customers with our data-protection solutions, including the industry leading VTL,” said Guillaume Imberti, President and General Manager, FalconStor EMEA. “With the growth we are seeing in Europe and other geographies, being driven by the demand for our disk-based data protection, our solution providers can confidently add to their bottom line profitability with further investments in FalconStor.”

Notes to editors

New and upgraded partner benefits
The FalconStor Solution Provider Program now has a three-tiered structure, comprising Elite, Premier and Associate. The higher the tier, the greater the revenue and training commitments to FalconStor, and the greater sales and marketing benefits for the solution provider. The key benefits and changes made to the FalconStor Solution Provider Program are high on partners’ lists of requests: training, leads, marketing funds, and rebates.

For partners who invest in sales and certification and reach Elite level membership, FalconStor has expanded its Market Development Fund (MDF) program. The MDF program targets one-on-one development initiatives with dedicated marketing assistance for key Solution Providers.

Additionally, FalconStor has implemented a quarterly-rebate incentive program that rewards Solution Providers that qualify through revenue and certification targets. The incentives are based on linear, quarter-over-quarter growth, rewarding base and stretch goals

More extensive partner communications
FalconStor has always placed strong emphasis on enhancing communications with its partner base. In the last six months it has implemented a “frequent touch” initiative that delivers information and updates to partners via a partner web portal, monthly webinars, newsletters, and a corporate-visit program. FalconStor is further expanding its partner communications through a Partner Advisory Council and quarterly Channel Forum — a “state-of-the-business” webinar for FalconStor partners.

The programs and benefits discussed in this release are examples and are offered at FalconStor’s sole discretion.

About FalconStor
For more information please click here.