Softbank BB Corp. and FalconStor Extend Partnership to Deliver the Benefits of Virtual Tape Library and Deduplication to the SMB Market in Japan

Business Wire,  May 28, 2008  

Tags: benefit, partnership, small and medium business

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Partners Complement Turnkey VTL Physical and Virtual Dedupe Appliances With Joint Technical and Marketing Initiatives

TOKYO -- FalconStor Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: FALC), the provider of TOTALLY Open[TM] network storage solutions, today announced an expanded partnership with Softbank BB. The FalconStor([R]) Virtual Tape Library (VTL) Storage Appliances and the FalconStor VTL Virtual Appliance will be available for the Japanese SMB market, and both companies will team to cooperatively drive marketing programs geared for channel partners and end users, including a customer support center.

"We are pleased to strengthen our commitment and partnership with FalconStor," said Yasuo Mizoguchi, senior vice president, director, Commerce and Service Division, SOFTBANK BB Corp. "We continue to be proactive in our efforts to provide practical business continuity and disaster recovery solutions to most organizations in Japan, and we are jointly working with FalconStor to augment our VTL physical and virtual appliance offerings with a formalized education program, and technical and sales support programs for channel partners and end users."

The FalconStor VTL Storage Appliances offer lightning-fast backup with enterprise-class reliability and efficiency to provide users freedom from backup window limitations and to leverage deduplication functionality to keep more data on-line for longer periods of time. The VTL Storage Appliances can be easily deployed within 30 minutes with no changes to a customer's existing environment. Its compatibility and integration with physical tape drives and libraries allows the VTL to export/duplicate tapes directly, by policy or on-demand at the speed of the SAN, without human intervention. The VTL Storage Appliances also allow SMB offices to replicate virtual tapes over the WAN to a main data center for centralized management and compliance.

The FalconStor VTL Virtual Appliance is a preinstalled, preconfigured, and ready-to-run software application packaged with an operating system inside a virtual machine--bringing the market-leading enterprise-level VTL technology with data deduplication to virtual environments. Developed for quick and easy deployment, the solution reduces infrastructure costs and complexity while maximizing the value of an organization's storage investments. The FalconStor VTL Virtual Appliance vastly improves the speed, reliability, and manageability of backups while optimizing storage and bandwidth efficiency for disaster recovery and continuous data availability.

FalconStor and Softbank BB will cooperatively build a business framework to market the FalconStor VTL appliances with various professional services, including technical training and user support. The companies will also leverage Softbank BB's distribution channel to provide cost-effective, automated disaster recovery and instant access to critical applications to meet customer needs.

FalconStor and Softbank BB will proactively market the FalconStor VTL appliances to deliver the easy-to-use backup solution to Japanese businesses in various industries. They will also work to expand the user base of the FalconStor VTL packages with a wider range of product offerings.

"SMB organizations face the same backup window issues as enterprises, but may have been passive in their efforts to address their situation when they find out the cost and effort involved," said Yoshiharu Yamanaka, country manager of FalconStor Japan. "Our joint effort with Softbank BB is to help our SMB customers realize the value of disk-based data protection and data deduplication technology, and the cost-effectiveness and ease of implementation of a high performance VTL, with the same functionality of enterprises to effectively reduce their backup window."

About FalconStor VTL Storage Appliances

FalconStor VTL Storage Appliances are cost-effective solutions that use disk to enhance the reliability, speed, and availability of tape backups. These easy-to-use, plug-and-play appliances bring the market-leading enterprise-level VTL technology and built-in data deduplication to your small-to-medium business (SMB) or remote/branch offices (ROBO), and are perfect for organizations with limited IT resources.

About FalconStor VTL Virtual Appliance

FalconStor VTL Virtual Appliance is a pre-configured, ready-to-run software application packaged with the operating system inside a virtual machine running under VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3. Developed for quick, easy deployment of VTL with dedupe in virtual environments, the solution reduces infrastructure cost/complexity and maximizes customers' ROI. VTL Virtual Appliance provides all the benefits and features of VTL Storage Appliances, for VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 users.

About SOFTBANK CORP.

SOFTBANK GROUP offers its customers a range of services including mobile communications, broadband infrastructure, fixed-line telecommunications, internet culture, e-Commerce, and others. For more information, please visit http://www.softbank.co.jp/en.