Falconstor Community

Well it’s no secret that the virtualization storm is changing the IT landscape, and I would say we are just starting. Everything Channel’s CRN magazine has identified the top 100 vendors in the virtualization space to help VARs more easily select the best virtualization products for their businesses – of course as an early player in the space, FalconStoris included on the list but that’s not where the news is. The news is that we have a top 100 virtualization list! And the question is how many vendors do we have in this space?

It’s actually very exiting to watch the dynamics in the space, and all the credit goes obviously to VMware for revitalizing the virtualization concept and bringing it more significantly to open systems. And, as I mentioned, it’s only the beginning. The abstraction and consolidation tools that were developed to optimize resource utilization are the drivers of a new era of computing that is focused on the importance of data and cross-platform collaboration.

At FalconStor we are building and delivering a service-oriented data protection model that integrates and leverages different virtualization technologies to simplify data protection processes and map IT to business operations.

You can check out CRN’s Virtualization 100 List in the May 23^rd issue of CRN.

Last week, the company held its first worldwide sales kickoff meeting as a confirmation of our global mission, bringing all the regions together under the one team/one mission spirit. But, as many saw it, the best part of the meeting had nothing to do with the global alignment, the clear and focused messaging, the renewed sense of purpose and direction, or even the great mission that we set up to accomplish in redefining the data protection space. The best part of the meeting was when a group of local children received brand-new bikes built by the North American sales team.

Comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery and (BCDR) processes and the testing of these systems are critical for all companies. Often business continuity is defined as handling the company’s ability to operate, while disaster recovery (DR) stands for the ability to restore full operations. However, for IT, implementing BCDR plans is overwhelming and complex. The sheer amount of IT infrastructure components that are involved in the process makes it almost impossible to manage. For instance, in a recent survey by TechTarget, only 41 percent of IT executives said they successfully recovered all their applications during a test of their BCDR solution and 54 percent reported testing their BCDR plan twice a year or more. These numbers are disturbingly low, as recovery time is everything and effective testing improves your recovery time.

I sat down today to write part two of my CIO Zone article about disaster recovery (DR) automation that addresses the cost factors of DR deployments. But after being glued to the news for the past few days and weeks following the nature-caused disaster in Japan and the human-caused disaster in Libya, I’m humbled by the human cost of these disasters and saddened by the tragic turn taken by these two very different catastrophes.