Actifio Extends Copy Data Virtualization Platform With Actifio Sky

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Launch of new virtual appliance-based product initially supports ROBO and cloud-based use cases, represents key milestone in emergence of “Actifio Anywhere” delivery model. 

BOSTON, MA – May 1, 2014 — /BackupReview.info/ — Actifio, the copy data virtualization company, today announced a significant expansion of its product portfolio dramatically increasing the scope and scale of its enterprise class data virtualization platform. The new offering will extend the functionality of Actifio CDS, making a virtual instance of the company’s Virtual Data Pipeline™ technology available wherever application data may reside, from the data center core to the public cloud.

The new product will be the first in a new family called “Actifio Sky^™,” and marks a milestone for the company as it moves beyond its integrated appliance-only roots. Company executives took the occasion to describe the company’s full scope product vision – Actifio Anywhere – in more detail than has previously been revealed.

What Actifio Does
Today distributed enterprises are focused on improving resiliency, agility, and mobility toward cloud-based infrastructure, even as the sheer volume of data they need to manage is exploding. Actifio’s copy data virtualization platform solves these problems, replacing a complex tangle of siloed storage and data management systems – all creating copies of the same production data – with a single solution that lets customers:

– Capture data from production applications according to an SLA that can be defined in just a few clicks and changed anytime,
– Manage the lifecycle of that data in the most efficient way through the creation of a single “golden master” that can be stored anywhere and updated incrementally forever, and
– Use that data to spin up an unlimited number of virtual copies for any use, anytime, anywhere.

Actifio virtualizes data as other technologies have virtualized compute and networking, decoupling management of increasingly strategic enterprise data from increasingly commoditized enterprise infrastructure. IDC estimates the worldwide market for products and services in this space, which it refers to as copy data management, at $46 Billion in 2014.

To support mid and large enterprises, Actifio has to date delivered this capability through the certified configuration and deployment of an integrated appliance, called Actifio CDS. Actifio CDS supports a complete range of platforms (VMware, Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, AS/400, Unix, Solaris…), applications (SQL, Oracle, Exchange, Sharepoint, SAP, DB2…), and use cases (backup, snapshot, BC/DR, dev & test, compliance, analytics…) across all vertical industries, in 32 countries with over an exabyte of application data under management.

Actifio Sky™
Actifio Sky is a new generation built on the foundation of the company’s Virtual Data Pipeline^™  technology, now protected by an expanding portfolio of 36 in process or approved patents. It extends the power of copy data virtualization from the data center to the edge of the enterprise, and into the cloud.

Actifio Sky offers a new level of deployment flexibility and range, enabling seamless data management wherever the enterprise data is located to improve data protection, governance, and analytics. Sky will be offered first for Remote / Branch Offices (ROBOs,) and a Cloud deployment option for businesses looking to shift enterprise workloads into the cloud. Together with Actifio’s CDS data center appliance, Actifio Sky eliminates barriers to data mobility between the edge to the core, enabling transformational data management velocity and scale across the enterprise.

Built on VDP technology, Actifio Sky’s capabilities now include:

• Easy Download and Deploy with a consumer-grade UI delivering an intuitive, point-and-click data management delivering faster time to productivity
• Application-centric, SLA-based management for powerful remote data protection and disaster recovery for applications
• Rapid recovery from remote site failure, centrally, or into the cloud
• The ability to vault data directly to public cloud storage services including Amazon^™ Web Services
• Patented Dedup-Async Replication^™ for network-optimized data replication and space efficiency through Direct-to-DeDup storage

“Actifio Sky gives our customers another powerful capability to capture, manage and use their data for multiple use-cases wherever it is stored – in remote offices or in the cloud – for recovery or application development scenarios,” said Abdul Altamimi, EVP RestorePoint. “As a leading provider of data protection and disaster recovery solutions, we’re equally excited by the positive response of our users to our Actifio-powered services, as well as Actifio’s continued platform innovation.  This solution from Actifio perfectly supports our customers’ needs to address exponential data growth, increasingly complex regulatory requirements and an expanding network of remote and branch offices.”

“Actifio Anywhere”
The company announced both deployment options of Actifio Sky in the context of a broader product vision than has previously been discussed.

“Actifio Sky is already giving our enterprise customers access to data sets they’d never been able to gather, analyze, and protect before, and simplifying the customer deployment model of our cloud service provider partners,” said Actifio Founder & CEO Ash Ashutosh.

“Enabling Actifio’s technology to run on a virtual appliance has been a key milestone in our platform vision right from the start. With the launch of this platform extension, we’re demonstrating the depth and breadth of our underlying technology, and taking an important step toward letting an even broader range of customers across every geography, vertical, and market segment tap the power of Actifio’s copy data virtualization model in whatever form makes the most sense for them… as a fully integrated appliance leveraging bundled, existing, or third-party storage; as a virtual appliance which can be deployed readily into the edge or the cloud; or as a cloud-based platform-as-a-service (PaaS,) available on demand and accessible through any device. We call this vision ‘Actifio Anywhere,’ and it points to the exciting range of Actifio products and services customers will see us introduce to the market over the coming months and years.”

For more information on Actifio Sky, visit: http://www.actifio.com/products/actifio-sky/

Supporting Quotes – Customers:

• “As an industry leader in disaster recovery and business continuity, we strive to work with the most innovative companies, like Actifio – a pioneer in copy data virtualization, to bring exceptional service to our customers,” commented Souvik Choudhury, vice president of Recovery Services product management at Sungard Availability Services. “Actifio provides our mutual customers with a way to free their data from underlying infrastructure with a compelling economic proposition.  We look forward to introducing this new product to our portfolio, to help manage our customer’s data wherever it resides – on premise or in the cloud.”

• “At the core of our crowdsourcing innovation, virtual technology and operational efficiencies is data. The technology solutions that power our ability to access and present information to our call-center teams are mission critical to our business,” said Martin Ingram, CIO Arise Virtual Solutions, “We are implementing Actifio Sky and are leveraging it together with our central Actifio CDS solution for better service levels at a lower cost than any other solution on the market today. This new innovation from Actifio further validates and extends our initial investment in copy data virtualization.”

• “Our experience with Actifio Sky has truly been remarkable.  We were able to deploy it in less than an hour and began replicating the protected data back to our datacenter soon after,” said Randy Bagby, Sr. Systems Engineer, Triad Retail Media. “This gave us local access to remote data that we’d frankly never been able to quickly access before. Going forward it will enable us to improve our ability to not only protect but access this important data when and where we need it.  The impact of that in our business will be significant.”

Supporting Quotes – Analysts:

• “Copy data virtualization represents a fundamental shift in approach to business agility and resiliency as IT professionals begin to think in terms of data management rather than ‘siloed’ backup/recovery, application dev/test, business-continuity, analytics, disaster-recovery and archiving operations,” said Dave Simpson, Senior Analyst at 451 Research. “Combining Actifio CDS’s proven ability with Actifio Sky’s rapid deployment at remote sites or in the cloud, users can now manage all their application data from a single platform, wherever application data may reside, transforming copy data from a liability into a strategic business advantage.”

• “As the amount of data managed by organizations continues to grow, the cost and complexity of copy-centric activities like backup and disaster recovery continues to rise,” said Steve Duplessie, Founder and Senior Analyst at ESG. “Actifio has hit upon the obvious solution – helping companies make fewer copies of data and maintain fewer silos. Now with Sky, it has eliminated any remaining barriers to data mobility, minimizing cost and complexity while delivering data copying, protection and restoration even as companies shift enterprise workloads into the cloud.”

• “Companies have to protect and manage their data as efficiently and effectively as possible in a new economy driven by requirements for 24/7 access. But in a quest to meet service-level objectives, generating multiple copies of primary data has become the norm for businesses, costing them roughly $46 billion in 2014 and consuming 65% of external storage systems capacity,” said Laura DuBois, Vice President at IDC. “Getting that spending under control while also maintaining business agility will be imperative for companies, and Actifio strikes at the root of this problem with Actifio Sky, offering a single platform for businesses to manage copies of data efficiently, maintaining service levels while creating significant cost savings. Whether apps live on-premise, at remote sites or in the cloud, Actifio’s customers now can easily capture, manage and use the data for multiple purposes while reducing cost and complexity.”

About Actifio
Actifio delivers copy data virtualization to hundreds of global enterprise customers and service provider partners in more than 30 countries around the world. Our Virtual Data Pipeline™ technology decouples data from infrastructure, enabling dramatic improvements in business resiliency, agility, and access to the cloud. Actifio replaces siloed data management applications with a radically simple, application-centric, SLA-driven approach that lets customers capture data from production applications, manage it more economically, and use it when and where they need to. Actifio is headquartered just outside Boston, Massachusetts, and can be reached via the web (actifio.com) Twitter (@actifio) or email at info@actifio.com.

Contact:
Travis Reynolds
(330) 572-4020
travis.reynolds@twcable.com

Source: Actifio

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