Crossroads Systems, Inc. (Pink Sheets:CRDS.PK), a leading provider
of data protection and Business Information Assurance (BIA) solutions,
today announced its new partnership with one of the world's largest
technological pioneers and most reputable European-based Storage
Solutions provider, Bull, through which they will market Crossroads
data protection solutions.
THE PROBLEM: Data loss
Corporations are obligated to meet regulatory and health
compliancy standards, which are driving ever-increasing data retention
requirements. Tape backups are an integral part of corporate backup
strategies. However, it is estimated that 33 percent of data written
to tape media cannot be recovered. Bull sought a powerful, flexible
and highly-secured solution to help its customers meet business and
compliance requirements for data recovery in a timely and
cost-effective manner.
THE SOLUTION: Bull selects Crossroads SurePath RVA
Crossroads' SurePath ReadVerify Appliance (RVA) is a simple
plug-and-play appliance that monitors and verifies the readability of
data written to tape. As RVA proactively alerts and reports on the
potential tape media degradation and the overall health of a backup
environment, customers gain such high return-on-investments benefits
that, within days, companies can self-justify purchase costs through
substantial overall IT cost reductions.
Bull selects Crossroads RVA
With more than 40 years of expertise in research, development and
deployment, Bull is announcing that it has selected Crossroads for its
advanced StoreWay data protection solutions as Bull's tape media
storage verification solution. Given the ease of use of Crossroads
ReadVerify Appliance and its extensive market needs, RVA will
initially be sold by Bull to its customers who are spread across more
than 100 countries.
Just as Europe's leading high-technology, financial and defense
organizations rely on Bull's trusted expertise to protect their most
sensitive and business-critical information, Bull sought a reliable
tape assurance solution from a reputable vendor. Crossroads, a leading
data protection provider with a solid track record, has continuously
delivered robust, affordable and high-performance solutions globally.
"Capitalizing on its extensive business experience and integration
expertise throughout European markets, Bull delivers a premier
portfolio of innovative and advanced storage solutions," said Benoit
Hallez, Director of the StoreWay Business Unit at Bull. "As many of
the most sensitive high-tech, financial and defense organizations in
Europe rely on Bull Storage solutions for ensuring access to critical
business information, we feel confident that by reselling Crossroads
ReadVerify Appliance our customers will benefit from higher levels of
data protection by addressing a problem area neglected by most storage
integrators. Crossroads RVA benefits all companies and governmental
organizations utilizing tape media by verifying against tape
degradation and ensuring the protection of their critical data
infrastructure."
Bull sees RVA as a important addition to it's StoreWay portfolio
of data protection products. Crossroads' ReadVerify Appliance gives
Bull's customers valuable insight on the performance of their tape
drives, highlighting performance and/or drive utilization issues.
Being able to monitor the use and performance gives customers
comprehensive tools to diagnose backup problems, and allows for
improvement of a customer's backup window. Additionally, RVA provides
a view of drive and media errors, and will alert customers when
problems begin to surface. In this way, Bull's customers can
proactively manage backup assets and correct problems before they
result in data loss.
"Given Bull's extensive customer-base and its recognized storage
expertise, we believe that this significant agreement will greatly
enhance the end-customer satisfaction, industry leadership and
corporate growth of both companies, resulting in a very successful,
financially-rewarding, long-lasting and expanding relationship," said
Herbert Grau, Executive Vice-President, Crossroads Systems.
About ReadVerify Appliance
Crossroads ReadVerify Appliance is a non-intrusive,
high-performance and highly-reliable appliance verifying and
monitoring the overall health of physical backup environments. As tape
degradation is inevitable and compliance requirements such as HIPAA,
SOX and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) on electronically
stored information (ESI) demand successful restoration and recovery of
data, RVA is one of the only affordable solutions that proactively
notifies IT administrators of physical backup environment degradation
prior to backup failure.
Since the release of RVA in February 2007, companies of all sizes
have acknowledged the need for data restoration assurance solutions
like RVA including: OnRamp, Farm Credit Bank of Texas, Texas Advanced
Computing Center (TACC) and San Diego Supercomputer Center. By
choosing RVA, Crossroads customers have realized the following
benefits:
-- Immediate ROI through better capital and media resource
management practices. Customers have noticed up to 50 percent
in savings within weeks.
-- Improved Performance via real-time reporting capabilities. RVA
offers relevant performance-specific information to the
drives, while delivering real-time trend analysis via
intuitive graphs and charts which are currently not available
through backup applications. As such, customers can rapidly
detect issues, which they would not have noticed previously,
fine-tune their environment and maximize the utilization of
their entire system.
-- Reliable Data Assurance by operating in a complimentary,
compatible and non-disruptive way with existing ISV backup
systems and processes. RVA reports on the health of its media
environment. RVA provides attributes-specific data about
drives, media and libraries that typically causes nearly 30
percent of backup failure. IT administrators can easily avoid
data losses by receiving pro-active alerts which are not
traditionally provided by backup application solutions. Rather
than wasting efforts and resources performing backups on
damaged equipment, IT storage and backup administrators can
complete backup activities once and be assured that they will
be able to recover data when needed.
As Bull wants to deliver practical data protection solutions to
its entire clientele, Bull will initially be reselling three models of
ReadVerify Appliance:
-- RV50f offers alerting and reporting on tape libraries of 50
slots or less
-- RV100f proactively monitors mid-sized tape libraries of 100 to
1500 slots
-- RV200f verifies data readability on enterprise-class libraries
of 2000 slots and more
To select the right solution that matches your current and
upcoming business needs, contact your Bull representative at:
storeway_contact@marketing.bull.net or Crossroads specialist at
sales@crossroads.com / 1-512-349-0300.
For more information regarding RVA and its proven ROI, please
visit: http://www.crossroads.com/products/surepath/rva.
About Bull, Architect of an Open World(TM)
As one of the leading European IT companies, Bull delivers open,
flexible and secure information systems. The group helps public and
private sector customers transform their information systems, applying
its know-how and expertise in three main areas:
-- Capitalizing on its extensive mainframe experience, Bull
designs and produces robust, innovative and open servers,
based on industry-standard technologies;
-- Building on its alliances with leading ISVs and long-standing
involvement with Open Source, Bull develops and implements
flexible and interoperable application infrastructures which
give business processes the freedom to evolve;
-- Bringing together recognized expertise in end-to-end IT
security, Bull secures data and exchanges that are so critical
in preserving customers' business integrity.
Bull has a particularly strong presence in the public, healthcare,
finance, telecommunications, manufacturing and defense sectors. Its
distribution network and business partners cover more than 100
countries worldwide. For more information visit: http://www.bull.com.
About Crossroads Systems, Inc.
Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Crossroads Systems is a leading
provider of Business Information Assurance (BIA) solutions.
Crossroads' solutions serve the growing needs of data storage,
business continuity, disaster recovery, information protection, risk
management and BIA markets. Crossroads' offerings help companies
store, manage and ensure the security, resiliency and access to their
most important asset--critical data. Crossroads' products are embedded
in leading industry companies' solutions including EMC, HP, Quantum
and Sun Microsystems. Crossroads (CRDS.PK) is traded on the Over the
Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB) and is a member of key industry
associations including the Storage Networking Industry Association
(SNIA). For more information about Crossroads Systems, please visit
www.crossroads.com or call 1-866-BUY-CRDS/1-866-643-7148.
Forward-Looking Statements
This release may include forward-looking statements. The words
"believe," "expect," "intend," "plan," "project," "will" and similar
phrases as they relate to Crossroads are intended to identify such
forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the current views
and assumptions of Crossroads and are subject to various risks and
uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially
from expectations.
(C) 2007 Crossroads Systems, Inc. Crossroads and Crossroads
Systems are registered trademarks of Crossroads Systems, Inc. All
specifications are subject to change without notice.
