Fujitsu Malaysia Launches Three New CentricStor Product Lines

Kuala Lumpur, September 26, 2005

Leading regional IT and communications solutions provider Fujitsu Malaysia today announced three new product lines for the CentricStor range of disk-to-disk-to-tape storage solutions.

Developed by Fujitsu Siemens Computers, the CentricStor Virtual Tape Appliance (VTA), Virtual Tape Controller (VTC) and Smart Backup Unit (SBU) range of appliances are designed to provide enhanced data protection, business continuity and flexible service levels for large enterprises, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as low-end mainframe customers.

CentricStor VTA

Engineered to deliver comprehensive data protection and high scalability for large data centres operating within heterogeneous environments, the enterprise-class VTA range includes redundant components to ensure high system availability and a failsafe configuration for cluster sites located far apart.

CentricStor VTA is available in five configurations – VTA 1000/2000/3000/4000/5000 – and will replace the existing CentricStor 100 and CentricStor 400 models

“Our new CentricStor models represent the range of customer-specific configurations which we produced on an individual basis in the past,” explained Dr Helmut Beck, Vice President Storage at Fujitsu Siemens Computers. “Today our knowledge enables us to meet these requirements and thus produce standardised CentricStor models more efficiently. This also pays off for our customers in the form of reduced prices. The five CentricStor VTA models can still be individually adapted on a customer-specific basis.“

CentricStor VTC

CentricStor VTC is an affordable entry-level device designed to meet the storage and data protection needs of SMEs, as well as branch offices of large corporations or government agencies.

A self-contained solution, CentricStor VTC incorporates 16 or 32 virtual tape drives and allows administrators to manage all the systems centrally. The device can also be used as a secondary system for data recovery, or to exchange of tape media with other CentricStor appliances.

CentricStor SBU

A complete virtual tape solution package for low-end mainframe customers, CentricStor SBU is available as a tailored solution for the operating systems BS2000/OSD from Fujitsu Siemens Computers, or OS/400, VM and VSE from IBM.

Comprising the CentricStor VTC, a tape library with linear tape open (LTO) drives, necessary software components and the control processor, CentricStor SBU offers state-of-the-art virtual tape technology to users of legacy systems.

“Many companies use these operating systems for their mission-critical applications and often work with old, expensive tape technology. CentricStor SBU allows them to modernise their tape processing with a powerful solution,” said Dr Beck.

Fujitsu Asia will launch CentricStor VTA, VTC and SBU for ASEAN markets including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam with immediate effect.

The CentricStor fail-safe disaster protection solution combines the speed of disk with the reliability of tape, for disk-to-disk-to-tape backup with integrated information lifecycle management (ILM) functions. CentricStor supports leading backup applications, major system platforms and major tape automation environments. Many satisfied customers in Europe are already using CentricStor for data protection and nearline storage consolidation. The powerful virtual tape appliance was first released for ASEAN markets by Fujitsu Asia in late-2004. Visit www.centricstor.com to find out more about CentricStor.