New EMC Continuous Availability Advisory Services Enable an Always On And Available IT Infrastructure

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) - February 12, 2013 -

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced Continuous Availability Advisory Services : a comprehensive assessment, cost/benefit analysis, and roadmap development offering delivered by EMC Global Services in combination with EMC ® VPLEX ® virtual storage which enables an always-on-and-available IT infrastructure with reduced CAPEX and OPEX. As demonstrated in certain customer engagements conducted by EMC, Continuous Availability Advisory Services have been shown to enable organizations to reduce server count by up to 40% by combining existing production, high availability, and disaster recovery compute platforms into a single solution .

EMC Continuous Availability Advisory Services: Helping Customers Fully Realize the Benefits of VPLEX and Continuous Availability with Active/Active Data Centers and Applications

Delivered by EMC Global Services, the Continuous Availability Advisory Services' suite of offerings include: assessing the readiness of applications and existing infrastructure, and developing an architectural design, roadmap and cost benefit analysis for the technical deployment and transition.

EMC Continuous Availability Advisory Services provides organizations with a proven services methodology that is based on EMC VPLEX virtual storage. Previously, a continuous availability environment was either limited to be within a data center, or required complex systems integration that made it expensive to build and maintain. EMC VPLEX provides the critical foundation for continuous availability by presenting read/writable virtual volumes in two geographically separated data centers. It enables users to build “stretched data centers,” permitting them to process data collaboratively, using server clustering technologies over distance, and to take a powerful new approach to business continuity design and execution. However, solutions built with EMC VPLEX and off-the-shelf clustering technologies can help organizations maximize information trust and availability.

EMC Global Services can help organizations by:

- Providing the organization with an assessment of the current environment to enable a change of focus from the recovery time and recovery point objectives, forging a path to improved availability.

- Enabling the organization to reduce risk associated with business continuity outages and restarts.

- Providing the organization with the architectural design and roadmap information to help enable the organization to deliver “Always- On, and Always-Available access” to its users, thereby, helping the business increase it competitive advantage.

Organizations are increasingly reliant on uninterrupted active/active access to data and applications. Additionally, the rapid growth of Big Data and globalization, increasing regulatory pressures, more frequent planned outages, and the impact of natural disasters have reinforced the need for management to continue operations through any type of disruption. In response, many IT service organizations have created an expensive labyrinth of different solutions and techniques to eliminate single points of failure in their data centers.

In a recent study ¹ commissioned by EMC, Forrester Consulting found that the increased reliance on technology is the number one factor driving increased risk in business. Organizations require new IT delivery models, such as continuous availability that provide greater control and visibility of data. This establishes a foundation of trust that IT infrastructure will perform the way it should even in the event of business disruptions that may occur.

Customer Quote 

Keith Mallonee, Senior Vice President, McKesson IT

“We recently examined a continuous availability strategy for  one of our major business units .  What we learned is that continuous availability is not only architecturally feasible, leveraging off-the-shelf products, it is achievable at significant savings.  EMC practitioners delivered far more than we expected, and the strategy is readily executable, enabling us to bring the business case to management quickly and efficiently.”

EMC Quote

Mike Koehler, Senior Vice President, Global Services, EMC Corporation

“Globalization, competition and the ever increasing reliance on IT systems has driven an evolution in business. CIOs and business leaders have an urgent need to improve availability to meet market and competitive demands for an “always-on-and-available” IT infrastructure. Whether customers want to transition to continuous availability for all their applications and data, or take a journeyed approach, EMC designed this new service to help clients assess their current position, strengthen their infrastructure, take full advantage of their existing technology, and improve their overall availability posture.”

Additional Resources

• Connect with EMC via Twitter , Facebook , YouTube , LinkedIn and ECN
• Learn more about EMC Global Services and EMC VPLEX
• Join the #EMCGS and #VPLEX conversations on Twitter.

Join Forrester and EMC for a live, online webcast today at 11:00 a.m. EST. to discover the latest strategies for transforming information availability.

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