Storage: Computer Associates Completes Industry's First Storage Protection "Double Play" With New Enterprise and Workgroup Versions of ARCserveIT - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Oct 12, 1998

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) Tuesday announced the general availability of the Enterprise and Workgroup Editions of its comprehensive ARCserveIT storage protection solution, with support for a wide range of platforms including Windows NT, NetWare and UNIX.

With this next generation of CA's award-winning ARCserve technology, CA is offering small businesses and corporate IT departments unprecedented flexibility in a rapidly deployable storage protection solution.

ARCserveIT Enterprise Edition is designed for large-scale heterogeneous computing environments. It provides the scalability, centralized administration and multi-platform support essential for protecting valuable information assets across the distributed enterprise infrastructure.

ARCserveIT Workgroup Edition is designed for LAN-centric departmental or small-business environments. It provides the ease of administration necessary to help reduce cost-of-ownership while delivering maximum protection and fast restoration capabilities for critical data.

"With the introduction of this complete ARCserveIT line, CA is giving customers real choices in how they want to deploy proven storage protection technology - practical choices that have to do with their computing environments, management strategies and budgets," said Yogesh Gupta, CA senior vice president of product strategy.

Gupta also pointed out that CA's broad ARCserveIT line provides additional flexibility in crafting an effective, individually customized backup strategy. "Instead of forcing customers into a rigid implementation, CA is giving IT decision-makers the flexibility they need to optimize their cost/benefit ratio for storage management," he said.

The completeness of the ARCserveIT product line also enables customers to easily transition from workgroup-based to enterprise-wide storage management strategies, allowing them to realize immediate benefit from targeted priority deployments while keeping a migration path open to broader implementations.

Similarly, ARCserveIT Enterprise Edition enables customers to apply the benefits of CA's heralded Unicenter TNG enterprise management technology to their storage management challenges first and then leverage that deployment as part of an upgrade to a full Unicenter TNG roll-out - if and when they choose to do so.

"The loss of data on any of our many platforms can have a significant negative impact on operations, customer satisfaction and future business opportunities," said Tony McNeil, UNIX server analyst at Catawba Memorial Hospital in Hickory, N.C. "With CA's ARCserveIT Enterprise Edition, we're safeguarding the value of all our data. And we're doing so with a solution that doesn't create an inordinate drain on our limited and expensive human resources."

ARCserveIT Enterprise Edition provides high-performance, automated storage management for Windows NT, multiple UNIX variants, NetWare, OS/2, AS/400 and OS/390 servers, and extends that protection to virtually any client - including Windows 3.x, Windows 95/98, Windows NT and Macintosh. Users can fully exploit leading edge Fibre Channel technology, while administrators can share large libraries among several ARCserveIT servers.

ARCserveIT's Backup Agent for Open Files helps ensure that even open files are protected, whether or not they have been locked. This means that backup tasks can be executed fully and securely without interrupting online operations. ARCserveIT also provides options for using MVS storage as part of an enterprise backup strategy, maximizing the return on legacy hardware and software investments. Free RAID support helps ensure extremely high-performance backup and provides fault tolerance for device and media failure. ARCserveIT Workgroup Edition supports up to six Windows NT and NetWare servers and incorporates both virus protection and data encryption facilities. It also includes free limited tape and optical library support. Its extensive device support can back up data to virtually any tape, removable drive or optical device, including 5.2Gb magneto-optical media. Graphical screens, wizards, alerts and easy-to-use scheduling facilities ensure that backup tasks can be properly executed with a minimum of effort. ARCserveIT Workgroup Edition also provides support for Microsoft Tape Format (MTF), allowing for users to leverage existing Windows NT backup utilities. Optional agents are available for Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, Ingres II, Microsoft SQL, Oracle, and Informix.

The race to win the "backup-war" has moved well-beyond features and centers now on core-integration-competencies," said Michael Peterson, president of Strategic Research Corporation. "CA's integration of workgroup ease-of-use, combined with data center class functionality, elevates CA's storage management solutions to the top of the competitive ladder. Think of what CA has accomplished as creating 'Enterprise Managed Storage', a new paradigm consistent with ARCserveIT's ability to view and control the world."