COPAN Systems Forms New Storage Ecosystem With Industry Leaders to Address Persistent Data Challenges

Monday September 18, 7:58 am ET

Ease of Data Access, Reliability, and Affordability Cited as Key Requirements for New Persistent Data Storage Architecture Designed to Manage Persistent Data - Estimated to Be More Than 70 Percent of Today’s Corporate Data

LONGMONT, Colo., Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/ — COPAN Systems, the leader in intelligent, enterprise MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) storage solutions, today announced that the company has joined with other storage industry leaders, including Sun Microsystems, Symantec, FalconStor, and Seagate Technology, to provide enterprise customers with a better solution for managing persistent data. Led by COPAN Systems, this new ecosystem, Persistent Data Storage Architecture (PDSA), is the first collaborative industry effort that specifically addresses the storage requirements of persistent data.

This new ecosystem will focus on persistent data, which is data that is recorded or aged to a point that it is unlikely to change or be modified, but must be retained for future reference or access. Examples of persistent data include backup data needed for recovery, traditional office documents and aged transaction records, financial records, and e-mails. According to some estimates, this classification of data now represents more than 70 percent of the data in a customer’s data center and is the fastest growing segment of stored data today.

Most data centers are currently tuned to handle transactional data, rather than persistent data. Examples of transactional data include online financial transactions, airline reservations, and other business-critical applications. Typically, today’s data centers are driven by a lower-cost storage platform created by replacing enterprise Fibre-Channel drives with SATA drives, but they do not support important persistent data requirements such as reliability, longevity, small footprint, and reduced power and cooling requirements. Data centers need a purpose-built architecture with a platform and application partners that provide an end-to-end solution to solve the problem.

New business requirements have changed both the amount and type of data that companies must now manage and use. Corporate governance, regulatory compliance, and reporting mandates such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley have extended the requirements to save and easily access documents. To date, the only option for IT professionals to manage these vast amounts of persistent data has been to store it with transactional data for easy access, or vault the information to tape for long-term retention with limited access.

According to Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst for the Taneja Group, “More than 70 percent of data being stored does not fit into either the transaction/business critical or vaulted to tape categories, but instead falls into the persistent data category. This data needs to be easily and affordably saved and managed. The cost, data access, and reliability issues surrounding the management of persistent data impact the entire storage industry.”

“To date, the storage industry has failed to meet customers’ growing persistent data challenges,” said Mark Ward, president and CEO of COPAN Systems. “As an innovator and leader in storage technology, COPAN Systems has created an enhanced MAID platform that is purpose-built for persistent data. We are currently collaborating with other leaders in the storage and data industries, from application ISVs to storage device manufacturers, to build an ecosystem that delivers an end-to-end persistent data solution for customers.”

To make this vision a reality, COPAN Systems is partnering with other industry leaders to define and integrate industry-leading products into a comprehensive PDSA solution. The following companies have come together to provide a complete, end-to-end persistent data storage solution:

    -- Sun Microsystems, Inc
-- Symantec Corp.
-- Seagate Technology, Inc.
-- FalconStor Software, Inc.
-- Xiotech Corp.
-- Revivio, Inc.
-- Seven Ten Storage Software, Inc.
-- WysDM Software
-- Index Engines, Inc.

“The growing requirement to manage persistent data has become one of the key challenges in the data center,” said Roger Archibald, senior vice president of marketing and business development with COPAN Systems. “We have put together a core group of storage and application leaders that understand the issues and are committed to creating products and services that are persistent data-aware, and work together to bring efficiency, reliability, and cost savings to customers. Our goal is to continue to add persistent data- aware vendors into this new storage ecosystem.”

    Benefits to customers include the following:

-- Easier access and retrieval of persistent data
-- Lower overall storage costs, as persistent data is no longer sitting on
expensive transactional-oriented disk arrays
-- Streamlined resource allocation, and better utilization and protection
of transactional data
-- Reduced operational and management costs, since data that was
previously vaulted can be maintained on a purpose-built infrastructure

The customer will immediately realize:

-- Reduced acquisition cost for the total storage infrastructure
-- Reduced operational costs and staffing requirements
-- Lower power, cooling, and maintenance costs

About COPAN Systems

COPAN Systems is the leading provider of intelligent, enterprise-class, enhanced MAID storage solutions that unlock the value of long-term, persistent data. The company is led by storage industry veterans from EMC, Sun/StorageTek, Hitachi Data Systems, Dell, HP/Compaq, and others, and is privately held with investments by Austin Ventures, Globespan Capital, Pequot Ventures, and Credit Suisse. COPAN Systems’ storage solutions have been shipping since March 2004, with customers spanning the healthcare, financial, government, media, and service provider industries. Solution implementations include backup/restore, archive, and disaster recovery. More information is available at http://www.COPANsys.com