More news continued to spill out of a storage conference and trade show Tuesday, and companies in the storage space not at the show took advantage of the attention to roll out new partnerships and products.
At Storage Networking World Fall 2003, a twice-a-year expo targeting storage and data center administrators that opened Monday in Orlando and runs through Thursday, several firms beat the drum.
Among them:
EMC and Nortel Networks announced a joint assessment effort targeting enterprises that want to better utilize wide area networks (WANs) and optical metropolitan area network (MANs) for long-distance data mirroring. The new service, dubbed Business Continuity over Optical Networks, is designed to help customers figure out the optimal storage and connectivity requirements to meet their recovery objectives. The two companies will, of course, also offer a joint solution to prospective customers. EMC will integrate its Symmetrix and CLARiion networked storage devices and its MirrorView remote replication software with Nortel's optical MAN platform.
Another partnership that earned play at the trade show was between Network Engines and Computer Associates, which said they would ship in December a mobile backup appliance for small and mid-sized businesses. The appliance -- which will be available in two versions, the MBA-30 and MBA-100 -- will be built by hardware maker Network Engines and feature software from Computer Associates. Targeting mobile workers, the appliance will produce backups of laptop data on pre-set schedules or automatically as soon as they connect to the wired network. Powered by Windows Server 2003 and packed with Computer Associates' BrightStor Mobile Backup and eTrust Antivirus software, the appliances will feature a pre-configured RAID storage subsystem with capacity for 30 or 100 users, depending on the model. Prices will start at $5,400, said the companies.
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