Global IT solutions company Quantum is investing in the areas of de-duplication and backup recovery archiving solutions.
According to Bill Britts, Quantum executive vice-president of sales, marketing and service, the company recently achieved one of its most profitable quarters in 10 years. Quantum's revenue for the fiscal 2009 year, ending 31 March, was R809 million.
Britts says Quantum is driving sales particularly in its DXi6500 backup appliances, which eliminates redundant data by providing deduplication. The DXi6500 solutions reduce typical disc requirements by 90%, so systems stop filling up. For disaster recovery protection, it replicates encrypted backup data between sites and reduces network bandwidth requirements by a factor of 20 and provides protection for virtual environments.
“In SA, resources at smaller sites are very limited, and the network bandwidth is not very reliable,” explains Britts. “So the idea of optimised replication and deduplication is very important to the way businesses are thinking about their backup. With our Quantum Africa partner, we have deployed several edge-to-core installations.”
According to Britts, new global regulations around data retention and the movement of data outside corporate and government entities are being enforced. “The requirements around confidentially and being able to prove that data is encrypted is driving the adoption of these kind of technologies.”
“Roughly 20% of customers have adopted some deduplication technology in the US, and slightly less in other regions. However, in future deduplication will become a fundamental part of data and storage management,” he states.
With its StorNext data management software being used in cloud storage deployments, Britts notes that Quantum is bullish about cloud computing technology. He adds that the growth and complexity of unstructured data is driving organisations to use cloud application services, so they don't have to invest in additional capital and staff to manage these storage environments.
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