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Europe lags US in virtualisation adoption

1ST JULY 2008

As the information explosion continues to drive businesses into the virtualised world, storage virtualisation continues to deliver real world business benefits to adopters. Recent independent surveys conducted in both the United States and Europe by leading provider of clustered NAS solutions for enterprises and content rich organisations, ONStor, Inc., indicate that the majority of businesses surveyed in both regions believe that their existing storage solutions will only be able to scale for the next one to two years.

While it has been widely recognised that storage virtualisation is the best way to provide a flexible, scalable and highly available storage environment, only 27% of European respondents are actually implementing storage virtualisation today as compared with 35% in the US.

73% of US respondents reported that they currently operate a virtualised server environment, and 67% answered that they are considering deploying virtualised storage in their data centres.

In the US, 45% of businesses surveyed stated that they would realise operational cost savings between 20-40%, which is the main driver of storage adoption. In Europe that figure was near identical on 48%.

Bob Miller, ONStor CEO, states that effective storage virtualisation delivers real business value, such as simplified management, improved utilisation and painless migration, and offers high-end features to customers.

“Customers already adopting a virtualised storage strategy are fast realising the benefits of reduced operational costs and improved data availability,” said Miller.

Other significant results from the survey include:
• 59% of respondents believe that at the current growth rate, their existing storage solution will be able to scale for only one to two years; way ahead of the European market, which was on 40%
• Half of US respondents believe that simplifying management is the most important consideration when choosing a storage virtualisation solution. In Europe the figure was far higher on 60% of the sample.
• 45% of US respondents consider 20-40% operational cost savings to be the number one motivation to switch from their current file storage solution to virtualised storage. In Europe the figure was comparable at 48%.

Customers are often faced with insurmountable amounts of data stored on a variety of disparate storage resources which highlights the need for a centralised, virtualised storage solution which is easy to manage. These solutions allow storage administrators to identify, provision and manage disparate storage as a single aggregated resource.

In addition, storage virtualisation allows storage resources to be altered and updated on the fly without disrupting application performance, generally reducing storage downtime for repairs and maintenance.

Respondents across both continents agree that as information continues to double year on year, storage virtualisation is fast becoming a business imperative.

About ONStor
ONStor provides clustered NAS solutions for both primary and value tier storage focusing on enterprise data centers and content rich organisations, giving customers the ability to cost-effectively manage the accelerating growth of unstructured data. ONStor's award-winning solutions deliver flexible data management, protection, and file server consolidation for a new generation of data intensive applications through a combination of advanced chnologies including virtualization and energy efficient design.

Proven at customer sites worldwide, ONStor's Pantera clustered NAS systems and Bobcat clustered NAS gateways offer the broadest choice of storage and enable customers to easily scale storage with the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO).  ONStor solutions are available through a global network of resellers and distribution partners. More information about ONStor can be found at www.onstor.com.

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ONStor, the ONStor logo, Pantera, and ONStor Bobcat are trademarks of ONStor, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All other marks and trademarks are or may be the property of their respective owners. Information regarding products, services and offerings may be superseded by subsequent documents and is subject to change without notice. For the latest information and specifications regarding ONStor, Inc. and any of its offerings or services, please contact your local sales office or the corporate headquarters.

Media Contacts:       
ONStor, Inc.      
Douglas W. Gruehl     
408-963-2463     
douglas.gruehl@onstor.com   

Spreckley Partners Ltd.
Melissa Powell
+44(0) 20 7388 9988
powell@spreckley.co.uk