QStar Announces Availability of its HSM Archive Platform on Apple Mac OS X

May 19, 2009

QStar is the first to bring enterprise class, tiered storage management to Apple business customers

Mary Esther, Florida - May 19, 2009 - QStar Technologies, Inc., a global leader in archiving, data protection and compliance solutions, today announced that its popular HSM archive platform is now available for Apple Mac OS X v10.5 (Snow Leopard).  With an extensive global install base on other operating systems, HSM’s advanced archiving and storage device management capabilities are now available for Apple Macintosh users, adding to QStar’s list of supported operating systems and markets. For the first time, the HSM platform provides a sophisticated storage solution supporting mixed RAID, optical (Blu-ray) and tape (LTO, SAIT, SDLT) technologies within the Apple environment.

Built for enterprise-level demands, HSM is a complete storage platform that automatically manages the migration and lifecycle of data across multiple tiers of storage.  The HSM solution architecture is based on the resilient 3-2-1 model* with high performance RAID storage, backed by a secure optical or tape archive and complete offline media management.  Supporting system capacities from a few terabytes to over a petabyte, HSM provides a very resilient yet cost effective solution with the performance, longevity and authenticity essential for demanding professional archives.

“QStar has been providing storage management software and solutions for many years and we have been watching the growth of Apple’s publishing, graphic arts, video editing and medical imaging markets with great interest,” explained Riccardo Finotti, CEO at QStar.  ”The Mac enterprise and server environment is becoming increasingly sophisticated and its storage needs have grown exponentially.  From a storage and data management perspective, Apple users are struggling with the same concerns as traditional Windows, UNIX and Linux customers.  Relentless data growth, risk management, compliance and cost containment are business critical issues that QStar helps companies to address.  QStar’s HSM archive platform is responding to the growing demand among Apple customers for enterprise class storage.  

“We see the availability of our HSM platform for Mac OS X as a major industry milestone,” commented Steve Tongish, global marketing director for QStar.  ”We believe that QStar is the first company to bring an enterprise-class archive solution to the Apple community, supporting high capacity RAID subsystems in combination with the latest generation Blu-ray and LTO libraries. HSM for Mac provides an excellent platform for storage intensive applications where Apple dominates.  This includes any applications where high value data and long term retention are critical to the business such as: publishing, graphics design, audio/video editing and medical imaging, to name just a few.”

* 3-2-1 Archiving and Data Protection Best Practice
A 3-2-1 strategy is a design framework that creates a highly resilient archive, while eliminating costly over provisioning within an existing storage infrastructure.  The 3-2-1 Best Practice advocates the retention for at least 3 copies of all critical business data, these copies should be kept on 2 different types of storage media, and at least 1 copy should be offsite on removable media.  This is a very simple principle that creates a very robust and cost effective archive environment when deployed with the QStar storage platform.  Visit the QStar website to learn more about 3-2-1: www.qstar.com/321_bestpractice.html

About QStar Technologies, Inc.  
For more than 20 years QStar has delivered enterprise class archival storage and data management solutions to customers around the world.  QStar consistently meets increasingly sophisticated requirements through industry leading technology with the capability and flexibility demanded in today’s challenging business climate.

QStar’s storage solutions are part of a comprehensive archive and data management platform that is hardware, system and data independent.  This unique architectural approach enables companies to optimize their existing IT infrastructure while minimizing disruption and capital expense.  With thousands of customers worldwide, QStar provides corporations, government agencies, and medical facilities with the strategies and solutions to manage a changing technology landscape while protecting their valuable digital assets for the future. 

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Media Contacts:
Mark Rieger
ProAmericas Marketing & Public Relations
markr@proamericas.com
303-520-4524

Steve Tongish
Global Marketing Director
steve.tongish@qstar.com
+44 0771 757 1464