Several New U.S. Customers for Xiotech Magnitude 3D 4000

Xiotech Corporation today announced that several new customers purchased Xiotech Magnitude 3D 4000 storage systems. New customers include Albion College (Albion, Mich.), Assurance Group, Inc. (Dublin, Ohio), Dakota County (Minnesota), East Central College (Union, Mo.), Netsmart Technologies, Inc. (Great River, N.Y.) and Salem State College (Salem, Mass.).

Released in October 2007, the Magnitude 3D 4000 virtualized storage area network (SAN) solution continues to demonstrate its appeal to mid-sized organizations looking for easy-to-manage storage systems that will adapt as their needs grow and change. Magnitude 3D 4000, built on a virtualized distributed cluster architecture, offers unprecedented ease of use with the ICON Manager user interface, automatic storage provisioning through Intelligent Provisioning and automated integration and customization with Web Services — all resulting in a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

Assurance Group, Inc., a regional business and technology consulting firm, was impressed with the ICON Manager user interface and its Virtual View plug-in, which provides end-to-end integration of storage in virtual server environments. The organization understands firsthand the importance of delivering a compelling value to customers, and determined Xiotech’s Magnitude 3D 4000 system would serve its needs most effectively as it expands its software-as-a-service (SaaS) proactive monitoring and disaster recovery business.

"We evaluated several storage vendor offerings, and Xiotech exceeded our expectations," said Lowell Bowdle, president, Assurance Group. "Storage virtualization, proven reliability and performance are very important, but Xiotech also excelled in ease of management with ICON Manager. With the Virtual View capability included, Xiotech has a unique and compelling offering that enables us to very easily manage storage for our virtualized servers, all on a reliable and scalable enterprise storage platform, which gives us and our clients peace of mind."

East Central College (ECC) is governed by local taxing districts, so the IT group must carefully evaluate all technology purchases for both initial cost and return on investment (ROI). After submitting a competitive request for proposal (RFP), ECC purchased Xiotech’s Magnitude 3D 4000 system for its advanced features and anticipated strong ROI.

"Magnitude 3D 4000 satisfied all requirements specified in our RFP and was the most cost-effective storage system proposed," said Robert Athearn, director, Information Technology, East Central College. "The Magnitude 3D system is feature rich with a comprehensive user interface that is easy to use, both for the inexperienced user as well as the expert administrator, and just about everything can be scripted. The system is scalable without requiring a hardware replacement when our storage needs grow. We anticipate a high return on our investment."

Netsmart Technologies, Inc., a leading supplier of on-demand and enterprise-wide software solutions to more than 18,000 health and human services providers and payers nationwide, weighed all of its options and chose the Magnitude 3D 4000 system to support its software-as-a-service (SaaS) and application service provider (ASP) lines of business.

"We selected the Magnitude 3D 4000 storage system after an extensive review of mid- and large-tier SAN systems," said Scott Anderson, senior director of Information Systems, Netsmart Technologies. "Our primary selection criteria included performance, robust management interface capabilities, Web Services integration and price. Magnitude 3D 4000 offered all of the capabilities we wanted, and the hands-on demonstration proved to us it was the right choice. We unanimously selected Xiotech to be our storage solution provider."

The Magnitude 3D 4000 family of storage systems includes four models, each with unique capabilities in virtualized environments, particularly with the recently announced Virtual View plug-in for ICON Manager. Virtual View integrates with server virtualization software to report on and automate storage provisioning and management tasks across the array, physical server and virtual machine storage layers.

"We provide organizations with easy-to-manage storage solutions that help them solve real-world IT challenges," said Mike Hoch, vice president, Marketing, Xiotech. "Utilizing Web Services, for instance, we are able to quickly deliver valuable new features, such as Virtual View, which dramatically simplifies storage management in virtual server environments. That’s a big reason why customers continue turning to Xiotech."

Additionally, the Magnitude 3D family offers iSCSI and Fibre Channel connectivity and multiple tiers of storage, enabling organizations to select the network connectivity, capacity and functionality that best meets their business needs.