EMC, Nortel Networks unveil Business Continuity over Optical Networks offering for enterprises
28 October 2003 Orlando, FL Lightwave - EMC Corp. and Nortel Networks announced today at Storage Networking World a new joint services offering to help enterprises cost-effectively use optical MANs and WANs for remote mirroring of their data.
The new offering, Business Continuity over Optical Networks, is an EMC proven solution and is available worldwide today. It includes a business continuity assessment from EMC and Nortel Networks that can help customers determine the optimal storage and connectivity requirements to meet their recovery objectives. This offering combines EMC's networked storage systems and remote replication software with Nortel Networks DWDM technology to provide a flexible, scalable, geographically dispersed business continuity infrastructure.
"EMC and Nortel Networks are addressing one of the biggest pain points for customers - configuring their infrastructure to meet their business continuity requirements," said Sterling Perrin, senior research analyst, IDC. "Companies are strapped for resources and are feeling increasing pressure, including from regulators, to make sure they can recover quickly from a disaster. Services that help customers implement remote mirroring over optical networks will allow them to meet their business requirements while saving time and money on operations."
The jointly developed solutions integrate EMC's Symmetrix and CLARiiON networked storage systems and EMC's Symmetrix Remote Data Facility, Symmetrix Remote Data Facility - Asynchronous, and MirrorView remote replication software with Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 5000 Multiservice Platform.
This combination gives enterprises the flexibility to match the right levels of protection and functionality - at the right cost - for their various information tiers. In addition, by using EMC's replication software, customers can improve recovery times from hours to minutes through synchronous and asynchronous replication.
"These solutions give customers the flexibility of selecting the EMC storage platform and replication software that best meets their needs, whether for synchronous or asynchronous replication," said Gregg Therkalsen, vice president, business continuity, EMC. "This range of choices will help customers of all sizes achieve the unparalleled protection that remote mirroring provides and will significantly shorten implementation times, while eliminating unnecessary costs. EMC and Nortel Networks have developed best practices based on our extensive expertise working with large banking, securities and telecommunications firms to create a joint solution set to help organizations better protect their information."
"This is a critical step in our work with EMC, ultimately benefiting enterprises by bringing them the highest quality business continuity solutions and extending productivity," said Marco Pagani, president, Optical Ethernet and Storage Solutions, Nortel Networks. "With more than 200 joint Nortel Networks and EMC customers, we're leveraging our cumulative experience to bring enterprises unprecedented joint assessment capabilities."
EMC and Nortel Networks plan to help enterprises drive further network cost reductions by expanding EMC proven solutions to include storage over SONET/SDH. The GFP card supporting this capability for Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 5100 and 5200 Multiservice Platforms recently completed EMC E-Lab qualification testing.