Alternative Technology announced an agreement to distribute Marathon Technologies everRun fault-tolerant, high availability software for physical and virtual server environments. Marathon's everRun software is for IT professionals at midsize companies and enterprises who want to prevent outages and data loss in their physical and virtual infrastructures. everRun provides fault-tolerant, high availability for Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2003 to deliver uninterrupted availability, data protection, and rapid recovery through a 'one-click' operation.

In keeping with Dell's mission to simplify IT, Dell announced the seamless integration of Dell EqualLogic storage arrays with VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), which automates disaster recovery (DR) management in virtual infrastructures. As one of VMware's largest resellers and Global Technology Alliance Partners, Dell and its network of Enterprise- Architecture-certified channel partners can now deliver a complete end-to-end DR automation and management solution. The combined Dell EqualLogic/VMware solution integrates PS Series Auto-Replication directly into SRM using PS Series SRM Storage Adapter software developed by Dell.

NetApp announced support for VMware Site Recovery Manager, a product from VMware for disaster recovery management and automation. This support provides customers with a disaster recovery solution built with VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware Infrastructure, and NetApp FAS storage systems. In addition, both companies will also offer an improved customer experience with the Virtualization Escalation Team (VET), a new joint customer support group.

LeftHand Networks announced its support for VMware Site Recovery Manager. VMware Site Recovery Manager is a pioneering product for disaster recovery management and automation. Part of VMware's suite of management and automation products for the data center, VMware Site Recovery Manager simplifies business continuity planning and testing, and reduces the risk and complexity associated with implementing disaster recovery. LeftHand Networks' certified Storage Replication Adapter allows customers to deploy a complete disaster recovery (DR) solution that automates DR for systems and storage across virtualized environments.

For many years secondary sites have been a part of the enterprise computing equation. Recent natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina opened the eyes of many IT administrators to the devastation that can compromise primary and backup IT facilities. The widespread confusion that followed Hurricane Katrina brought into sharp focus the need for comprehensive business continuity plans that incorporated secondary data center sites located far enough away so as to be untouched by the disaster affecting the primary data site. However, many IT organizations believe the costs involved in establishing secondary data centers are out of reach for all but the largest organizations.

Successful businesses execute simultaneously on three fronts: sustained revenue growth, continuous cost control, and comprehensive risk management. Driven by a significant rise in public awareness of information security breaches, the discipline of risk management is under increased pressure to protect the information assets of the business better.

Every person who has ever been responsible for backing up data has had to ask themselves the same basic questions. They need to know what data has to be backed up, how frequently it changes, where to store the backups, and how quickly the data will have to be restored in case of disaster. The answers to these questions in a large way determine the media used to back up the data and the ultimate storage location for the backup. It seems that every day we read about a hurricane, fire, flood, or other disaster. Couple the natural disasters with the need for 24x7 availability and increasing government regulation and it's easy to understand why the disaster recovery plans of an organization are coming under scrutiny. For years the general pattern was to back up data to tape and store those tapes onsite in a vault or offsite in a secure location. But several recent developments have started people looking at other alternatives.

Today's security threats have become increasingly sophisticated and often combine several types of technology to maximize their impact on organizations. Even though businesses can't always prevent hardware damage from disasters like fires and hurricanes, they can protect data and information from disaster, manmade or natural.

EMC is entering the SMB software market, acquiring Dantz Development Corporation in a $50M deal that brings it a well-regarded product platform, Retrospect, and what EMC software group EVP Dave DeWalt calls 'wide-reaching and deep channels to market.' The synergies between EMC and Dantz, DeWalt says, abound.