ECX 2.4 by Catalogic Software for Copy Data Management

Catalogic Software, Inc., provider of software-defined copy data management (CDM), anounced ECX 2.4, the newest version of its software platform.

This release delivers new capabilities by adding Oracle and SQL application aware integration, support for EMC Unity storage, native support for Amazon Web Services and deepening integration with DevOps tools.

ECX 2.4 includes several other significant features that expand the capabilities of the platform for new and existing customers.

As as ‘In-Place’ CDM solution, ECX is designed to leverage the snapshot and replication technologies of the existing storage and virtual infrastructure in a customer environment. This in-place CDM approach has advantages over alternatives in that it requires no additional infrastructure for the customer to purchase and manage, and leverages the existing production environment rather than requiring the creation of new copies of data. This advantage is especially powerful in database environments where the databases need to remain online and accessible continuously, and there the data volumes make the creation of extra copies untenable.

“Today’s release of ECX 2.4 delivers deep integration for both Oracle and SQL, allowing our customers to leverage their existing infrastructure to further expand their ability to eliminate copy sprawl, while dramatically improving their capabilities to deliver fresh copies of key databases to those functions and business units that demand them,” commented Ed Walsh, CEO, Catalogic. “At the same time, we are delivering huge advancements in ECX’s capabilities for both hybrid cloud and DevOps-two key modernization initiatives that our customers are pursuing.”

With its application aware integration with Oracle and SQL database management systems, ECX delivers a robust and cost effective CDM solution for mission critical database environments, solving the database sprawl problem that most customers wrestle with today.

Today, it is common for an enterprise to have more than 200 database instances and have more than 10 copies of each database, creating an unmanageable amount of copy data that wastes capital and operational costs. Managing the copy environment slows down IT efforts across multiple fronts: test and development, reporting and analytics, DevOps and more. The enhanced database features in ECX 2.4 – including data masking, integrated pre- and post-scripting and log management – eliminate the copy sprawl problem and simplify managing, tracking and accessing database copies.

“Catalogic has been making great headway in the management of copy data, and their move into deeper database integration is a logical and significant progression,” said David Floyer, CTO and co-founder, Wikibon. “By simplifying the complex steps involved in providing actionable, up-to-date database copies to multiple data consumers in an organization, Catalogic enables IT to provide much faster and controlled time-to-data-copy, increases the data value of databases, and take a long step towards full digitization of the organization.”

The addition of integrated AWS S3 storage support enables ECX copy policies to now be directed to AWS S3 destinations, giving ECX customers the option to extend the management and use of data to the public cloud while maintaining control and orchestration through the centralized CDM platform. This is one of several hybrid cloud use cases where ECX allows customers to extend the creation and management of copy data to the cloud without changing existing processes and methodologies.

Catalogic continues to offer IT organizations ways to enable rapid DevOps development methodologies. Adding to the already available ECX ability to drive ‘infrastructure as code’ using enterprise storage arrays, this release includes a plug-in for DevOps tool Puppet, allowing Puppet users to directly manage and deploy live operating environments that include the use of a copy of the relevant application data, entirely through the Puppet console using native Puppet commands. The Puppet plug-in is one of a series of new add-ons via the Catalogic ECX Marketplace, a new on-line store for sharing and downloading new capabilities. Pre-built, downloadable scripts and plug-ins allow integration of the ECX RESTful API with Chef, Puppet, IBM UrbanCode DevOps tools among others.

In addition, Catalogic ECX is available as a development tool on the IBM Bluemix Garage, giving developers an easy means to access system-of-record infrastructure without affecting production environments.

“DevOps is hard. Don’t let anyone tell you different. It requires buy in from all relevant individuals, the willingness to change departmental and even corporate culture, and above all the right tools,” commented Trevor Pott, founder, eGeek Consulting. “Catalogic’s self-service portal and API access give developers the ability to manage and provision their IT environments. At the same time operations can set limits using profiles and role based administration. This latest release delivers a bundle of valuable capabilities, further demonstrating Catalogic’s commitment to enabling DevOps for a broad set of IT customers. Catalogic makes taking that first, critical step towards more modern IT practices easier and more palatable for all involved.”

With this release, Catalogic ECX is the first copy data management solution to support the EMC Unity product line ECX 2.4 also adds support for the EMC Unity Family of storage arrays, including Unity 300, 400, 500, 600 (all-flash and hybrid flash) and EMC Unity VSA.

ECX 2.4 Summary of New Key Features: