ChannelWeb.UK on DataCore Software Announces Launch of EMEA Professional Services Group

Vendor drives channel demand for a value-added services and consultancy arm to deliver best-of-breed Storage Virtualisation consultancy and resources.

DataCore Software has announced the establishment of an EMEA Professional Services Group to provide partners with access to specialist consulting, migration and troubleshooting resources which are targeted to support its base of channel partners with on-tap certificated expertise in hardware, software, storage and virtualisation platforms used in larger scale and enterprise projects.

“We listened to our partners when they requested help to meet the high demand for Datacore related engagements due to the extensive growth of our user base within Europe; we should establish a vendor-led Professional Services group to assist them with fulfillment. The consultants within this group represent some of the most experienced SAN engineers in the industry today and can provide partners with valuable additional resource, when and where required, simply by plugging into our portfolio of customisable end-to-end services.” noted Glenn Bullingham, the new Director of Professional Services, EMEA at DataCore.  Formerly of its Systems Engineering Group, Glenn brings with him over 10 years’ of experience delivering bespoke DataCore solutions and service engagements within the reseller and end user channel.

Professional Services will be made available via DataCore’s established two-tier channel network.  A range of packaged service offerings carrying pre-defined scope and statements of work will be available directly from the published products and services catalog whilst bespoke consultancy services for specific and advanced projects can be delivered upon request. All DataCore consultants within the Professional Services division have a minimum of five years’ experience executing DataCore storage virtualisation solutions and hold leading industry accreditations.  Service types offered within the Professional Services portfolio will include:-

·         Health-checking and remote assessments

·         Migration services

·         Advanced Design and Integration

·         Performance analysis and optimization

·         Advanced upgrades

·         VMware integration advice

A programme of partner webinars detailing the services offered within the Professional Services portfolio will run throughout Q4, 2013.  To register your initial interest, click here.

“The timing is perfect to launch our new services group as we actively want to support our ongoing 50% growth rate in the Enterprise sector. Whether required to fulfill fixed price statement of works or for assisting large-scale enterprise projects, the DataCore consultants carry the highest levels of accreditation and experience across all storage and virtualisation solutions.” said Christian Hagen, Vice President EMEA.

ChannelWeb Coverage: 

DataCore insists new services arm will not pinch VAR sales

Storage vendor DataCore has insisted its newly launched EMEA Professional Services Group (PSG) will not cannibalise resellers' business.The new division aims to sell specialist consulting and troubleshooting services to customers via resellers – specifically those with limited DataCore resources or expertise. The vendor insisted it would not take the services offerings to customers direct and that the PSG's establishment was based on strong channel demand, which had built up over three years.

The offering will include health-checking assessment technology as well as migration services, performance analysis and VMware integration advice.
The PSG will be headed up by Glen Bullingham, the firm's newly appointed director of professional services, who said that his firm has no desire to steal the lunch of its partners.
"Our strategy is not to take the channel's bread and butter direct," he said. "It won't be sold direct to end users, only through the channel.

"We have made an aggressive push in partner recruitment which has given us excellent touch with new customer opportunities. Some of those [new resellers] have limited resources and our objective is... to focus on enablement."

More: http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/2309367/datacore-insists-new-services-arm-will-not-pinch-var-sales

Software Defined Storage a fancy way to say virtualization, says DataCore Software chairman

http://searchvirtualstorage.techtarget.com/feature/SDS-a-fancy-way-to-say-virtualization-says-DataCore-Software-chairman

Executive Editor Ellen Obrien of SearchStorage interviews DataCore Software Corp. chairman and founder Ziya Aral on software-defined storage (SDS) and how customers get into trouble, and why distinguishing between SDS and virtualization isn't so easy.

I want to get started by talking about software-defined storage. Everyone seems to have a play here. How do you define it?

Ziya Aral: Each time this subject comes up, there is a slight redefinition of the term. But software-defined storage is a continuation of what used to be called storage virtualization. Storage virtualization [by] itself lacks server virtualization. A virtual machine is one of these concepts that basically argues for creating a software emulation layer. It's an approach to breaking hardware away from software. Now, there are a million good reasons to do that. Just thinking about the question for 5 minutes gets you there. Hardware and software live different lives with different expertise.

Hardware is redefined every 18 months. Software sometimes has a half-life of 10, 15, 20 years. It makes absolute sense to architect software and hardware differently and to have a software layer that is defined in a perfect world, in a perfect universe. [In that layer], storage is perfect. There's an absolutely infinite amount of space. It has all of the positive characteristics that you want for it. It has high availability, data has integrity, [and] it can move around at will. And then there's hardware. Hardware has the real limitations that physics impose. And you would like those two broken apart from each other.

Can you explain to us how software-defined storage is different from standard virtualization?

Aral: No. I can't.

Do you believe it's one and the same?

Aral: I think that it is essentially one and the same. Now, there are always detail differences, but it's like asking the question, 'How is the cloud different from storage service providers [SSPs] of 10 years ago?' Now, conceptually many of the cloud vendors have gone for direct repetition of what the SSP guys used to say. The technology has changed; commercially it's more practical. There are elements to the story that reflect the current thinking on many things. But in essence, the idea is the same. Software-defined storage is similar.

We're still doing emulation. And frankly, emulation is a bad word in our industry because emulation equals 'slow.' It's getting one thing to do what another thing is supposed to be doing. The other thing is several times more complicated. But frankly, emulation is the beginning of storage virtualization, of server virtualization. When the power of the underlying technology, the hardware technology, reaches a certain critical mass, then the software is able to really begin to abstract in a fundamental way from those hardware limitations. And that's the real basis of software-defined storage.

How do you stand out in such a competitive market right now? What's your pitch to customers?

Aral: Typically, their problem is they've got a bunch of controllers from this vendor, a bunch of controllers from this vendor, and they don't work together. So, when these fail, these don't take over. These aren't fast enough. So, we find ourselves selling after the fact in most cases.

Now, that's not always true. DataCore Software's getting to be a reasonably sized company. Today, in many cases, we sell at the architectural level. [However], the bulk of our business still continues to be making up for the damage done previously. In those cases, we're covering disaster recovery where none exists. For example, a customer must have immediate availability of data at all times. OK, terrific, that's great. It's a requirement of many businesses. It is absolutely universal.

They bought a box. The box has two power supplies, two power cords, two sets of logic and one piece of software driving all of it. The box fails. All right, let's think about this. [They say,] 'We should have another box. Better still, another box hooked up to another power grid somewhere. This would be great. It'd be terrific 30 miles across town.' [The vendor says,] 'We don't do that.' [They say,] 'You don't do that? OK. How do I do that then?' Answer: DataCore.

[They might say,] 'But, but, but EMC does that. They do that with two boxes of their own. But we have an old box and the new EMC box. Now do I do that?' [We say,] 'Well, you don't.'

That's what we do most of the time. It is a key piece of storage architecture, but eventually software defines storage, eliminates storage as such. It reduces storage devices to peripherals.

Now, EMC builds and sells more of those devices than anyone else around. Why would they talk about software-defined storage? In fact, why would any of the larger hardware vendors talk about it? Well, they're not stupid people. They're smart people, and they understand the science. They talk about it in anticipation of an evolving architecture that leads to many opportunities.

But, I am sad to say, 15 years into it, we're still the radical. This is crazy. This is so obviously true. Yet, we're still the radical.

Where do you see it 15 years from now?

Aral: Storage operating systems will, I believe, take the place of large, high-end storage controllers today. That is, you will build your application infrastructure around them. They will be one logically combined, logically integrated entity. But the entity itself will be a ball that moves. You put it on that platform. You put it over here. You put it in Phoenix. You move it to Tokyo. You outsource by taking that whole ball and putting it out on the cloud. You pull it back in because those damn cloud providers, they're charging me too much and they don't give me the response I want.

This whole thing will be essentially nothing other than the reflection of the business process or the application architecture guy's vision of how he wants this thing to work. It will be a figment of the mind. The fact that it lives on computers -- and where those computers live -- will be an afterthought. It'll be an afterthought for a different guy, like the networking guy that you have that's basically responsible for the wires.

Will that significantly change the role of the storage manager, storage admin?

Aral: Forgive me. Those are our customers, and I love those people. But their role is changing already. That was the most rapidly growing section of the IT industry for a while. It sure isn't today. Those guys are drowning. They're drowning. And they're going to up their game and lower their tolerance of this and that box.

We have a T-shirt at DataCore. It's an internal-use T-shirt. It says 'Hardware Sucks.' This is a new introduction of an old T-shirt. What it means is not that hardware sucks. Hardware is terrific. It does all this stuff. But when you're chained to it, man, it hurts. It hurts. You've got to free yourself of that.

DataCore’s SANsymphony™-V Software Defined Storage Platform Receives 2013 SVC Award for the Storage Project of the Year with Quorn Foods installation

Leading UK End User testimonial Award recognises the significant performance improvements in critical apps and intelligent auto-tiering for Quorn Food’s data set.

DataCore Software was notified that it had won a prestigious 2013 SVC (Storage, Virtualisation & Cloud) Project Awards for the Storage Project of the Year category for the installation at Quorn Foods (part of the Marlow Foods Group).  The Awards, organised by leading media house, Angel Business Communications (titles include Data Centre Solutions, Virutalization World and Storage Networking Solutions), aims to showcase the Best of British IT Storage customer endorsements, and culminated in a Central London prestigious awards ceremony.

Sharon Munday, DataCore Marketing Manager and author of the Quorn Food testimonial commented. “We are genuinely thrilled to receive this award as it is all about recognizing enduring business benefits to the customer. The Quorn Foods installation showcases how best to utilise the power of a software defined storage layer, not only to shore up the virtualised estate, but also to provide underlying tools to the business to increase competitive edge. In the case of Quorn, deploying DataCore’s SANsymphony-V solution led to a decrease in ERP data mining times at critical month end, from 20 minutes to a blistering 20 seconds. That’s an eye -opening achievement that enticed the   independent panel of judges.”

Simon Birbeck, from IT partner Waterstons, elaborated further:- “What we achieved here was the transitioning of Quorn Foods from a greenfield virtualisation site with lots of legacy hardware of varying age and efficiency, to an efficient install that now boasts intelligent auto-tiering and cascading of data depending on importance to the business. Quorn Foods has come to rely on the advice and installation from Waterstons with DataCore’s SANsymphony-V sitting at the heart of this optimised success.”

DataCore’s Kevin Davids, Hayley Furner and Emily Darling were on-stage to collect the Award at the glittering ceremony.

Franziska Priebe, Marketing Manager of award organisers Angel Business Communications, says “This year we have had not only a significant increase in the overall number of nominations but also in the total votes received. The SVC  Awards recognise the users, manufacturers and suppliers operating in the cloud, virtualization and storage sectors and are voted for by the readers of our wide range of print and online publications. All finalists did well in making the shortlist but Quorn Foods (Marlow Foods) supported by DataCore Software was the clear winner in its category ‘Private Sector Storage Project of the Year’.”

DataCore Extends Storage Reach to the Server with new Software-defined Storage Platform release

As the line between storage attached to a server and a network continues to blur, IT organizations are looking for a way to manage both resources in tandem.

To address that specific issue, DataCore has released an upgrade to its SANsymphony-V storage virtualization software that extends the reach of its storage management capabilities beyond storage on the network to include magnetic and Flash storage that are attached directly to a server.

According to Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing for DataCore, as commodity-based storage gets deployed on servers and attached to the network, IT organizations want to be able to manage the resources as one logical pool of resources. Gonzalez says SANsymphony-V R 9.0.4 extends the reach of DataCore’s approach to software-defined storage (SDS) at a time when IT organizations are plugging more storage directly into servers to optimize the performance of mission-critical applications.

At the same time, the capacity growth demands are creating requirements for pools of storage that can logically scale out over time using commodity-based storage attached to the network. Rather than treating both of those instances as separate instances of storage, Gonzalez says SANsymphony is now optimized to handle a full spectrum of storage deployment scenarios.

Performance close to application servers and shared capacity and services in the SAN

Other new features in SANsymphony-V include support for up to 16 storage nodes, synchronous mirroring between storage nodes, the ability to more easily move data between diverse virtual machine environments, and a service that makes it easier to reclaim unused storage space.

With the advent of storage virtualization coupled with the rise of SDS, the storage landscape is rapidly transforming. Driving that transition, says Gonzalez, is a desire to replace expensive storage systems based on proprietary controllers with industry-standard systems based on x86 server architectures. As that trend continues to gain momentum, Gonzalez says it’s only a matter of time before storage is seen as a challenge to be solved more by software than with the underlying hardware used to physically store the data.

Based on: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/it-unmasked/datacore-extends-storage-reach-to-the-server.html

2013 Storage Product of the Year Award Winner: The DataCore SANsymphony- V R9 Storage Virtualization Platform

DataCore Software, the leader in software-defined storage architecture and premier provider of storage virtualization software, has won the UK's top storage awards – “The Storage Product of the Year Award” - at the prestigious 2013 Storage Awards sponsored by Storage Magazin and Network Computing.

The Storage Awards were established in 2004 to recognize best-in-breed, easy to use solutions that make the working lives of storage and virtualization managers easier and more effective.

DataCore Software Announces Launch of EMEA Professional Services Group

Vendor drives channel demand for a value-added services and consultancy arm

 DataCore Software has announced the establishment of an EMEA Professional Services Group to provide partners with access to specialist consulting, migration and troubleshooting resources which are targeted to support its base of channel partners with on-tap certificated expertise in hardware, software, storage and virtualisation platforms used in larger scale and enterprise projects.

“We listened to our partners when they requested help to meet the high demand for Datacore related engagements due to the extensive growth of our user base within Europe; we should establish a vendor-led Professional Services group to assist them with fulfillment. The consultants within this group represent some of the most experienced SAN engineers in the industry today and can provide partners with valuable additional resource, when and where required, simply by plugging into our portfolio of customisable end-to-end services.” noted Glenn Bullingham, the new Director of Professional Services, EMEA at DataCore.  Formerly of its Systems Engineering Group, Glenn brings with him over 10 years’ of experience delivering bespoke DataCore solutions and service engagements within the reseller and end user channel.

Professional Services will be made available via DataCore’s established two-tier channel network.  A range of packaged service offerings carrying pre-defined scope and statements of work will be available directly from the published products and services catalog whilst bespoke consultancy services for specific and advanced projects can be delivered upon request. All DataCore consultants within the Professional Services division have a minimum of five years’ experience executing DataCore storage virtualisation solutions and hold leading industry accreditations.  Service types offered within the Professional Services portfolio will include:-

• Health-checking and remote assessments
• Migration services
• Advanced Design and Integration
• Performance analysis and optimization
• Advanced upgrades
• VMware integration advice

A programme of partner webinars detailing the services offered within the Professional Services portfolio will run throughout Q4, 2013.  To register your initial interest, click here.

“The timing is perfect to launch our new services group as we actively want to support our ongoing 50% growth rate in the Enterprise sector. Whether required to fulfill fixed price statement of works or for assisting large-scale enterprise projects, the DataCore consultants carry the highest levels of accreditation and experience across all storage and virtualisation solutions.” said Christian Hagen, Vice President EMEA.

Why DataCore? 36 Great Reasons to Stop Fighting Storage Hardware plus Why Software-defined Storage Frees You From Hardware Lock-in!

See our Information Site on Software Defined Storage and Storage Virtualization:
http://www.datacore.com/International/Country/UK/stop-fighting-your-storage-hardware.aspx

Why DataCore? Whitepaper: 36 Reasons & Benefits

Videos: View educational video series on storage virtualization and software defined storage.

Click below:

DataCore Keeps Your Systems Up and Continuously Available.

How much business will you lose when your systems are down? How will you protect your

business critical applications from storage-related outages?

Running out and buying costly new storage is one answer, but not the best one. DataCore safeguards your data, enables continuous availability for storage across metro-wide distances and allows easy system replication to remote sites for rapid disaster recovery. What’s more, SANsymphony-V dramatically speeds up performance and allows you to reclaim the full use of your existing storage space. With DataCore’s storage virtualization software, you can enjoy centralized and uniform administration across all your storage investments, more uptime, and best of all, huge cost savings.

Find out more: http://www.datacore.com/International/Country/UK/stop-fighting-your-storage-hardware.aspx

DataCore Software's take on software-defined storage and storage virtualisation

   

View the 5 minute Video

Somehow, it's become a question everyone is looking to answer -- and answer in a way that separates them from all the other people trying to succeed in the same space: What is software-defined storage? Depending on whom you ask, software-defined storage (SDS) is either a meaningless buzz phrase, a new spin on virtualization, or a truly revolutionary way of thinking about the connection between -- and necessary separation of -- hardware and software. In this SearchVirtualStorage.com video, DataCore Software Chairman Ziya Aral offers his take on SDS, and his perspective on how the technology has evolved.

"Each time this subject comes up, there is a slight redefinition of the term, but software-defined storage is a continuation of what used to be called storage virtualization,"

Aral said. It's an approach, simply put, "to breaking hardware away from software." This year, major storage players such as EMC made a play in the SDS market. EMC disclosed its plans for ViPR in May and began shipping it in August. The vendor acknowledged that defining the term was not simple, and executives agreed the term was overused.

Many industry analysts agree with Aral's point, that software-defined storage is already living up to the hype and it's because storage and server systems are looking more and more similar to each other. For companies like DataCore, the SDS craze is an opportunity to point out that major vendors are trying to fix a "broken storage model," and that DataCore believes the company's SANsymphony-V storage virtualization software, with no hardware or application-programming-interface restrictions, set the standard for SDS many years ago.

You can also read Aral's thoughts on the SSD market and SDS -- and how one will impact the other.

DataCore's new software defined storage platform release adds scale to SANsymphony-V storage virtualization software

SearchVirtualStorage: http://searchvirtualstorage.techtarget.com/news/2240208065/DataCore-adds-scale-to-SANsymphony-V-storage-virtualization-software

DataCore Software Corp. upgraded its SANsymphony-V storage virtualization software, doubling its scalability and adding self-healing and high-availability features to the platform, which the vendor bills as a more mature and complete alternative to EMC Corp.'s ViPR.

SANsymphony-V brings storage features such as caching, thin provisioning, auto tiering, replication, mirroring and snapshots across different types of storage hardware. It treats storage across hardware platforms as one pool. DataCore began calling its software a storage hypervisor and then software-defined storage long before EMC introduced its ViPR platform earlier this year.

The biggest change with SANsymphony-V 9.0.4 is it scales to 16 nodes instead of the previous eight-node limit. That could bring DataCore into more enterprise implementations.

"Historically, the knock on DataCore has been that it only scales to a point, so this is a big deal," said Jim Bagley, senior analyst at Austin, Texas-based SSG-NOW.

The self-healing capability uses synchronous mirroring of data between nodes to detect nodes that have failed or that have been taken out of service. SANsymphony-V then migrates data on those nodes to other hardware without disrupting applications. Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing at DataCore, said this feature was added mostly for solid-state drives "that have a higher propensity to flake out on you" than RAID-protected hard disk drives.

The new version can also move virtual disks non-disruptively between storage pools. This allows virtual volumes from a test/development pool to be relocated to a production pool without disrupting access to applications. SANsymphony-V's remote replication now will automatically sync the data on two sites if they get out of sync, and its audit logs will record time stamps of each administrative action that can help troubleshoot problems on the SAN.

According to Gonzalez, what has changed the most is awareness of SANsymphony-V. He said DataCore's message was often lost in the wilderness until EMC decided to push software-defined storage and the idea of storage management that works across varied hardware platforms.

"ViPR has put a whole different perspective on what we do and the kinds of people interested in what we do," Gonzalez said. "Our value proposition from the beginning was to provide a uniform platform to control storage devices. That was a hard value to push when storage hardware guys were saying, 'Do this as a hardware function; the function exists just for this device and each device brings its own piece of intelligence.'"

Gonzalez said DataCore has seen a spike in customer interest since EMC began talking about ViPR in May. He said ViPR represents a flip-flop for EMC, which used to position storage as hardware-centric and siloed. "Now they say, 'Why not just plug in this uniform software and plug in the right hardware for the job?'" he said.

DataCore has been saying that for years and has been selling to EMC customers, as well as customers of other large storage vendors. Gonzalez said SANsymphony-V is used mostly by companies that are heavily virtualized and run more than one type of storage hardware.

With ViPR on the market, EMC becomes a competitor to DataCore while also helping to highlight SANsymphony-V's value.

"All the buzz about the advantages of software-defined storage and the goodness that it brings helps DataCore," SSG-NOW's Bagley said. "The primary difference is EMC is all about pushing its own hardware, and DataCore is device-agnostic."