WENATCHEE VALLEY COLLEGE SELECTS GRIDSTORE TO ELIMINATE MULTIPLE NAS STORAGE SILOS INTO A SINGLE SCALE-OUT NAS STORAGE SOLUTION

University to Transform its Distributed Storage Infrastructure with Gridstore Enterprise-class Scale-out NAS to Reduce the Risk, Cost and Complexity of Sprawling NAS Islands


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – May 4, 2011 – Gridstore, the leader in scale-out NAS solutions for the SMB market, today announced that Wenatchee Valley College has standardized on Gridstore to transform its distributed silo-based storage into a comprehensive, enterprise-class storage solution. Using the Gridstore NASg solution, the school will achieve a powerful scale-out NAS storage platform that will eliminate storage sprawl and multiple single points of failure while benefiting from a next-generation storage offering at 1/3 the cost of standalone NAS solutions.

Wenatchee Valley College has two campuses and multiple departments to maintain in North Central Washington State. The NASg solution lets Wenatchee Valley College consolidate file sharing from multiple servers into a single pool of highly reliable storage that can incrementally grow as you need it - eliminating the need to overprovision storage resources. The NASg solution frees DAS from existing servers that can be reallocated to meet expanded application use cases on a per server basis. Unlike the previous storage islands that multiply management complexity and single points of failure, NASg provides a reliable and scalable storage foundation to meet current and future storage requirements.

“I selected Gridstore because I can get a scalable and reliable scale-out NAS system that provides me with enterprise features, ease of management and minimal upfront capital investment, so I don’t have to overprovision and pay for my future storage requirements today,” said Steve Garcia, systems and security administrator, Wenatchee Valley College. “We are implementing the NASg system across our different departments and campuses. The system's combination of scalability and economies of scale are a very compelling value proposition for anyone who wants an on-demand storage solution that lets you add capacity on the fly with no performance or management headaches to worry about.”

After evaluating multiple options, Wenatchee Valley College selected Gridstore’s NASg solution because it is the only solution that combines the simplicity, convenience and affordability of NAS with the scalability, performance and reliability of enterprise-class storage. As a result, the school will optimize their current environment and eliminate multiple storage silos into a dynamic scale-out NAS storage solution to ensure business continuity and minimize risk.

“Organizations like Wenatchee depend on their storage to run their operations. With Gridstore NASg, every organization, regardless of the size of its data storage requirements, can have the scalable, reliable storage it requires without the cost or complexity of traditional enterprise storage,” said Kelly Murphy, CEO, Gridstore. “Small and midsized organizations like Wenatchee Valley College can run nonstop on Gridstore and scale the amount of storage they require, eliminate storage islands and pay as they grow based on business needs.”

About Gridstore
Gridstore is the leader in scale-out Network Attached Storage (NAS) products. The Gridstore NASg solution provides unlimited storage capacity and reliability at a fraction of the cost of traditional storage solutions. NASg is designed for small-to-mid-sized businesses and Managed Service Providers who struggle with the risk, cost and complexity of storage sprawl and who need enterprise class storage without the cost and complexity. Founded in 2007, Gridstore is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. and has development facilities in Dublin, Ireland. For more information, please visit: http://ping.fm/9s8F6

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Media Contact:
Sabrina Sanchez
Ventana Public Relations
(540) 253-5060
sabrina.sanchez@ventanapr.com

Users cite as Dell Boomi too complex and time-consuming, Queplix is a solution of choice to address integration needs - http://bit.ly/l63jkH

Search Data Management posted the following article recently:

Dell this week released a fresh update to its recently acquired Boomi AtomSphere SaaS integration suite, but at least two companies will not be using the product anytime soon.

Carl Wright, vice president of sales with storage area network firm Coraid, and Nick Strong, an associate IT consultant with Appirio Inc., a cloud-based applications provider, independently evaluated older versions of Dell Boomi and decided that it was too complex and time-consuming for their integration needs. They ultimately chose competing products and currently have no plans to look back.

"[Coraid] originally tried to use Boomi to create a connector between [NetSuite and Salesforce.com] and, frankly, it was cumbersome and uneconomical and, quite frankly, we couldn't get it to work properly," said Wright, who has a background in information technology. "It was a one-to-one connector between fields and tables, and you had to basically orchestrate the whole thing yourself."

Dell acquired Boomi last November as part of an ongoing push to enhance its cloud computing portfolio. Some of the other cloud vendors Dell has acquired include infrastructure providers Scalent Systems Inc., DynamicOps Inc. and Joyent Inc. The Dell Boomi offering allows users to, among other things, transfer data between cloud and on-premises applications.

The spring update to Boomi AtomSphere includes new enhancements such as change data capture capabilities, which reduce the size of data sets being processed; large data processing capabilities, which help users automate the data integration process; and a new application program interface (API) that allows third-party monitoring tools to keep an eye on AtomSphere integration activity. Pricing for the suite starts at $500 per month, according to Dell.

Appirio's Strong, who evaluated Boomi about three months ago, said he felt the low initial starting price for the suite was attractive but later decided that it failed to deliver enough value for the money.

"When you get a basic license from them, they restrict it to where you can only connect to like two or three data sources," Strong said. "It won't let you connect to any more."

Dell Boomi versus the alternatives

Redwood City, Calif.-based Coraid first evaluated Boomi about three years ago, after the company began using Salesforce.com for its customer relationship management (CRM) needs. Founded in 2002, Coraid initially ran its CRM operations on NetSuite, but eventually decided that Saleforce.com was a better fit for sales and marketing operations.

"We ended up with really two enterprise CRMs, each with the notion of 'customer' in it, and NetSuite was the system of record for most of that data," Wright said. "But [we needed] a lot of the entitlement things, such as support and maintenance contracts and things like that, inside of Salesforce in order to facilitate [some] customer interactions."

Coraid needed to get Salesforce and NetSuite to play nicely together and started looking at technologies that could make it happen. Salesforce recommended Boomi, but Coraid found it too complex. The company eventually decided that data virtualization technology from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Queplix Corp. was the right choice for the job.

"Today, all of our workflows are facilitated real time between NetSuite and Salesforce using the Queplix data virtualization tool," he said. "It creates a global metadata catalog."

Queplix says its products help users securely integrate, deploy and manage cloud and on-premises applications with no programming or SQL knowledge required.

"In the process of crawling our database repositories, Queplix identified a ton of inconsistencies," Wright said. "We had thousands and thousands of records with a little over 250 that were not correct, and it allowed us to fix them easily."

For the full article visit http://bit.ly/l63jkH.

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Queplix Partners with QTI International to Address Complex Data Integration Challenges Faced by Global Manufacturing Companies

Partnership with South Korean Systems Integrator Expands Queplix Footprint to Asia and Escalates Delivery of Advanced Data Virtualization Technology - http://bit.ly/jhdQuQ

Queplix™ Corp., a leader in data integration and data management, today announced that QTI International, a system integration firm in South Korea, is a new partner in the Queplix Advantage Partner Program™. QTI, which works with industry leading manufacturing companies such as Samsung®, Hitachi® and Toyota®, will implement Queplix's advanced data virtualization technology to integrate extensive product and materials information that is the lifeblood of supply chain management. The partnership with QTI extends Queplix's presence into Asia and advances delivery of its technology on a worldwide scale.

“In response to customer demand, we've been working to integrate large database systems that span multiple manufacturing plants around the world, but found it to be a very challenging endeavor," said Gyuseop Oh, Ph.D., CEO, QTI International. "When we saw the capabilities of Queplix's data virtualization platform, we knew immediately it would be the right solution for the hard integration problems we're trying solve. We look forward to partnering with Queplix and eliminating these problems for our customers so they can focus on the strategic aspects of operating their business, not on the difficulties of getting their systems to work together."

The powerful architecture of the Queplix Virtual Data Manager™, the company's flagship product which drives the application and data integration process, includes a series of intelligent Application Software Blades™ that identify and extract key data and associated security information from many different target applications such as Oracle SCM (ORCL: NASDAQ), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), and others. The blades identify and extract key metadata and associated security information from the data stored within these applications, then bring it into the Queplix Engine to support data integration with other applications.

“The fact that QTI International, a technology solutions provider for some of the world's largest manufacturing companies, chose to partner with Queplix in answer to its customers' data integration and management requirements, is a true testament to the value of our data virtualization platform," said Mark Cashman, CEO, Queplix. "QTI is recognized for its superior techology expertise and implementation skills and we welcome them to our Advantage Partner Program."

Queplix Advantage Partner Program

The Advantage Partner Program provides the industry's most advanced data integration and data management solutions available to value added resellers (VARs), independent software vendors (ISVs), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and system integrators and professional services (SIPS) firms. Queplix offers partners access to its data virtualization technology, training, marketing and customer support programs. It also provides a framework for a variety of other programs designed to maximize success for partners' go to market initiatives.

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About Queplix Corp.

Queplix™ is a leader in data integration and data management. Our products enable customers to securely integrate, deploy and manage cloud and on-premise applications and data with speed, simplicity and automation. Uniquely, no programming or SQL is required. Our data virtualization and powerful data management automatically harmonize the data between applications. Our customers benefit from greater cost savings, a rapid return on investment and the strategic benefits of true data mobility. Queplix has thousands of users around the world, serving customers such as The Home Depot, Homesite and Sony Ericsson. Please visit http://www.queplix.com for more information.

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Queplix, Advantage Partner Program, Virtual Data Manager, Application Software Blades, and Queplix logo are trademarks of Queplix Corp. All other brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

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Diving in to MDM: A Perspective on the Complexities and Potential of a Market In Transition - http://bit.ly/eOjIlN

Author: Michael Zuckerman, Queplix CMO

Master data management (MDM) is a market in transition. The realization of the return on investment, operational benefits and ultimately the strategic advantage associated with the application of MDM technologies can be very significant. Yet, the goals of MDM have not been fully realized for many organizations. Projects have been put on hold or on extended delay. The reasons for this are numerous and the barrage of countervailing forces will continue to threaten these projects. Other organizations have been unable or unwilling to fund MDM projects for reasons that may include perceived difficulty, scale and the overall return on investment.

MDM requires a substantial investment in software, hardware, professional services and integration services. At the core, MDM is a huge data integration project. The investment in professional services and integration services is many times the actual cost of software licenses for the typical implementation. The ratio between the software and the services in fact suggests that MDM is primarily a services and integration offering. Many of the consultants involved would immediately agree. In fact, there are many costs which are often not captured that relate just to the many meetings, communications and organizational dialog both to gather necessary knowledge and reach consensus as to the plan of action. MDM is certainly an organization-wide dialog that impacts every IT component, both centralized and distributed, in information technology and within the individual lines of business.

In 2007, the market for master data management was predicted by one analyst to be “over $5 billion by 2011.” Yet, in 2010 the market reached a far different place. Past projections for growth and size were missed by very substantial margins.

These are the predictions of three different top industry analysts in 2010 about the MDM market:

•  “Estimated to be $2.2 billion this year.” (2010)

•  “MDM is projected to top $2 billion by 2012”

•  “PIM and customer master software revenues potentially exceeding $2 billion in 2012”

The question that immediately comes to mind is, "What happened?” What slowed this market down? Where is this market today? How should that impact my decisions to implement MDM processes and tools? What, if anything, is wrong with current MDM processes and tools? What approaches are available to me to reach the same or better savings with higher return on investment, greater speed of implementation and lower risk?

Prevailing winds came towards MDM from several sources. The first strong headwind was the collision between any multi-year project and the economic trauma of 2009. In a state of budget cutbacks and economic losses, any project that spanned more than a single budget cycle/year without measurable and beneficial results was in jeopardy. Notwithstanding the milestones for any MDM project, the operating business units may have been less likely to support these projects given all of the choices pressuring cutbacks. Further, consider that most of the expense for the current MDM paradigm is wrapped around consulting services. These projects are expensive and replete with professional services and integration services that go far beyond any license cost for the MDM software.

Master Data Management implementations for most corporations, unless they had a previous failure, were one-time events. The experience curve was new. At the same time MDM is perhaps the largest and most complex data integration project in the information technology world today. This only raises the probability of project management challenges and project failure. As Sun Tzu said centuries ago, and I'm paraphrasing, "never go into a battle unless you know you can win." Yet many of us did.

Other prevailing winds came from the broad array of difficult and time consuming technology issues. The implementation of the current MDM paradigm is certainly on the very short list with the most complex and difficult technology challenges in information technology. Consider that you must integrate every major application (and ultimately every application that touches the data being aligned) across the organization to achieve success. This is not a one time, static data slice like a data warehouse but can be living, breathing data in operational systems. The practical considerations of doing all of this are enormous.

Beyond the physical connectivity and security, you need to consider the differences in data sources. You need a complete understanding of every system’s data structures, metadata and the semantic content of this data across all of your major systems on a worldwide basis. Legacy applications typically are relational in nature and use tables and columns. New applications may be object oriented. This was further complicated several years ago with the strong emergence of cloud-based computing. Clouds hold your data – not you. Public clouds such as salesforce.com will not integrate the same way as your on-premise systems. Compliance issues abound and effect both transactional and non-transactional data. All of this adds complexity to the technology considerations.

The process of implementing Data Governance, and, of course, MDM, requires many necessary and discrete milestones. However, most of the user community and the senior management in your organization do not view it that way. The senior management community only views success, in any part, as a function of the visibility of fully synchronized data across the operational system. Anything short of this is generally viewed as something other than successful.

Next time I'll try to identify the challenge areas in MDM so we can begin to craft strategies that lead us to victory (project success and return on investment). Onward.

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Storage Switzerland Validates Gridstore’s Scale-out NASg as a Key Solution for the SMB Market http://bit.ly/gMyH3W

Storage Switzerland Report Underscores The Benefits Of The Gridstore Scale-Out NAS Solution For The SMB Market

Analyst Firm Discusses How Small to Mid-Sized Businesses Can Benefit from a NAS Solution that Eliminates Storage Silos, Reduces Complexity and Risk at Unparalleled Cost Savings


Mountain View, CA. – April 12, 2011 – Gridstore™, the leader in scale-out NAS solutions for the SMB market, today announced that analyst firm Storage Switzerland has recognized Gridstore as a leading solution for scale-out NAS for SMB and managed service provider (MSP) organizations. The Storage Switzerland report, titled “What is Mid-Range Scale-Out Storage,” underscores the benefits of Gridstore’s scale-out NAS approach for the small to mid-sized business that eliminates storage silos, reduces management complexity and risk at a fraction of the cost of traditional NAS offerings.

Findings of the Storage Switzerland report validate the value of this type of storage approach for the SMB market. According to George Crump, founder of Storage Switzerland, “Scale-out storage has benefits for organizations of any size, as its ability to add performance and capacity incrementally makes storage planning significantly easier. The problem is that the current implementation and design of scale-out storage is most often targeted at the larger enterprise customer. But mid-range businesses would benefit, potentially more so, from an architecture that grows with them too. A new scale-out design is needed to meet the needs of mid-range customers.”

The Gridstore NASg solution is addressing the requirements of the SMB today with a powerful grid processing architecture that allows storage processing to be offloaded from the storage nodes and distributed across powerful client machines in a network. Storage clients then have parallel access to a virtualized storage pool built from simple, low cost storage blocks. The combination of advanced processing technology and simple building blocks of storage dramatically lowers the overall cost and increases its performance, scalability and reliability. Small to medium-sized businesses are now able to share files with excellent performance and not have to add new NAS devices as their capacity demands increase.

“Gridstore has architected a scale-out NAS solution designed from day one to meet the needs of the SMB organization today by allowing them to start small and incrementally grow storage resources in a controlled, cost-effective way while minimizing the complexity and risk of managing islands of storage across the organization,” Kelly Murphy, CEO, Gridstore. “By leveraging a building block approach to adding storage, SMBs can eliminate high storage costs while minimizing the reliability and risk of managing multiple storage silos perpetuated by traditional standalone NAS.”

Gridstore NASg makes it possible for small to mid-sized businesses to enjoy the benefits of scale-out storage. With NASg 2.0, MSPs and SMBs can eliminate the cost and complexity of NAS storage sprawl and the business risk of multiple single points of failure while reducing the cost of standalone NAS solutions by as much as a third. Now businesses of any size can take advantage of scale-out storage and run nonstop on Gridstore. To view the complete Storage Switzerland report visit:
http://ping.fm/HbMqH

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About Gridstore
Gridstore is the leader in scale-out Network Attached Storage (NAS) products. The Gridstore NASg solution provides unlimited storage capacity and reliability at a fraction of the cost of traditional storage solutions. NASg is designed for small to mid-sized businesses and Managed Service Providers who struggle with the risk, cost and complexity of storage sprawl and who need enterprise class storage without the cost and complexity. Founded in 2007, Gridstore is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. and has development facilities in Dublin, Ireland. For more information, please visit: http://ping.fm/f0L1N

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Media Contact:
Sabrina Sanchez
Ventana Public Relations
(540) 253-5060
sabrina.sanchez@ventanapr.com

Coraid Deploys Queplix Data Virtualization to Integrate Customer Data Across Salesforce and Netsuite

Virtual Data Manager Ensures Data Consistency Between Applications to Enhance Salesforce Automation, Enterprise Resource Managment, and Customer Relationship Management - http://bit.ly/fuYqgy

Queplix™ Corp., a leader in data virtualization, today announced that Coraid® Inc., a leading developer of Ethernet SAN storage solutions, has deployed Queplix Virtual Data Manager™ to synchronize critical customer data across Salesforce® and Netsuite® for enhancement of its salesforce automation, enterprise resource management and customer relationship management (CRM) efforts. This synchronization ensures that all Coraid users are consistently working with the best possible data about their most valuable resource – their customers – whether they are using Salesforce or Netsuite.

“Integration between these two cloud-based business applications is an essential part of day-to-day operations at Coraid. It's imperative that users can gain access to the most correct, up-to-date information,” said Josh Leslie, vice president of North American sales at Coraid.  "We had used an alternate cloud integration technology, but it wasn't able to deliver the data quality and business-rule implementation we needed. Queplix Virtual Data Manager not only solved the problem of consistent data but also was the only solution we found that provides a clear view to the business rules that govern Coraid's internal processes. We also will be changing and improving business process by automating links into Dun and Bradstreet for data quality."

Queplix Virtual Data Manager streamlines and simplifies the process of synchronizing data across different platforms through Data Harmonization™ with absolutely no SQL required. Legacy solutions that involve multiple steps such as topology and data schema analysis, and that rely on ETL and 'wire frame' diagram tools, make data integration a complex and costly process.

In contrast, the Queplix architecture includes a series of intelligent Application Software Blades™ that identify and extract key metadata and associated security information from target applications and move it to the Queplix persistent metadata catalog. There, the data is automatically harmonized with other systems. The initial setup and ongoing Data Harmonization ensure that Coraid users have the same consistent view of information from both Salesforce and Netsuite. Queplix offers the only integration solution that uses the power of data virtualization, and does not require SQL or coding. This made it easy for the Coraid team to participate in the implementation process, and Queplix professional services delivered the turnkey implementation to Coraid on time and on budget.

"Enterprises today face a very real problem when it comes to ensuring that all users have access to consistent, up-to-date information, because the same data may be stored in and used by different systems," said Julie Lockner, vice president and senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. "Solutions such as Queplix data virtualization, that provide an easier, more cost-effective way to achieve data consistency across applications, offer an attractive alternative to traditional ETL tools."

"Companies like Coraid want to focus on their business, not on the difficulties of getting their systems to work the way they need them to," said Mark Cashman, CEO, Queplix. "Our Virtual Data Manager removes a major obstacle to data integration, enabling customers to achieve integration quickly and at a fraction of the cost of existing solutions."

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Resource library: For more information about data virtualization and application integration, visit Queplix Resource Library.

About Queplix Corp.

Queplix is a leader in data virtualization. Data virtualization enables our customers to automatically and securely integrate cloud, SaaS and on-premise applications and data with speed and simplicity. Uniquely, Queplix brings powerful data management to automatically harmonize the integrated applications and data for higher business value. Our customers benefit from greater cost savings and rapid return on investment. Queplix has thousands of users around the world, serving customers such as The Home Depot, Homesite and Sony Ericsson. Please visit http://www.queplix.com for more information.

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Queplix, Virtual Data Manager, Data Harmonization, Application Software Blades, and the Queplix logo are trademarks of Queplix Corp. All other brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

For parties interested in Queplix, data virtualization, data integration, data integration software, master data management, business intelligence, composite software