Vendor News
Lockdown Networks closes it's doors on NAC market - March 20, 2008
This was a Train wrack waiting to happen security analysts are not surprised by the sudden demise of Lockdown Networks, given the shaky state of the Network Access Control (NAC) market. But questions abound for those who use Lockdown technology in their IT environments. The biggest question is where customers will get support for the products they've installed now that the vendor has imploded.
A Lockdown spokesperson said in an email Thursday that the vendor is contacting customers and partners directly to provide more information. Certain employees have been retained to oversee the shutdown of the company and entertain offers to Lockdown's intellectual property. Having not been listed in the Magic Quadrant like a Junipter Networks.
"The company will try to sell some of its assets (technology), and is fortunate enough to be able to give its employees several weeks of severance and a few months of health benefits to help them find their next job," the spokesperson said. "They are smart, talented people who worked very hard and Lockdown is glad to be able to do that for them. The bottom line is that the NAC market is still developing; Lockdown made a go, and in the end, it wasn't enough."
"I'd be very worried about support for the products," said Andrew Mapp, vice president and service director of security and risk management strategies in Orlando Florida, with Sencilo Solutions. "I have not seen any announcement about who might pick up the technology or who might continue the support but if the company just dies, the products will be in limbo."
This is the latest in a series of events indicating trouble for the NAC market. In January, for example, Vernier Networks quietly re-launched itself under a new name, Autonomic Networks, and approach. The company hasn't revealed many details about its new direction, but has noted that it will move away from its heavy NAC focus.
Analysts have suggested the NAC market grew too crowded and that smaller companies would either follow Vernier's lead or go away because far fewer enterprises are adopting the technology than vendors had initially expected or hoped.
Most enterprises seem to have dismissed NAC as too complicated and expensive for their environment, and as 451 Group Senior Analyst Paul Roberts has noted, IT professionals have found ways to bolster access control using the technology they already have instead of investing in new NAC products. We would suggest to anyone looking at a NAC product to look no further then Juniper Networks.
Roberts said Thursday that Lockdown's demise surprised him since he asked the company point-blank in January if they were looking for additional funding and they said no. The vendor also touted some big enterprise wins at the time, including T-Mobile and Chevron.
"Frankly, something precipitous happened and I'm not sure what," he said in an email exchange. "I'm not sure what their story is on product support, but when this kind of thing happens, obviously, it effects other startups and tends to lend credence to the 'go with a name you can trust' argument that larger vendors make all the time in NAC and other areas as well."
Maiwald believes the whole NAC market category was artificial to begin with. NAC is really a control or set of controls and not really a product or a product category, he said, adding that there are different approaches to controlling who and what comes on to the network.
"I'm not surprised that we are seeing some of the smaller NAC vendors disappearing or trying to reinvent themselves," Maiwald said. "NAC is a control or a system. NAC is not a simple product. A control over who is on your network requires quite a few moving parts and that does not even begin to deal with the relationship of network and security groups within an enterprise." Or see Juniper Network's white paper on NAC - http://www.juniper.net/solutions/literature/white_papers/nac_deployment_opus_one.pdf
Roger Herbst, senior IT technical specialist for the Canton, Ohio-based Timken Company, said his company is not currently doing anything with NAC because it requires significant infrastructure plus lots of care and feeding.
"To some degree, I see NAC as very similar to PKI, and we all know how well those vendors did over the long haul," Herbst said. "How many years was it 'the year of PKI?' You better have a business case in hand when you ask for the funds to implement a NAC solution. Being a security guy, I want NAC to provide me with compliance checking and perhaps some quarantining. That can be done many ways, but most are highly dependent on what plumbing you have in place."
That said, he's not against doing something with NAC in the future. He has looked at some of the vendors and found one of the better products to be what Sygate offered a few years ago before they were acquired by Symantec Corp.
"The combination of their Enforcer inline devices and their SODA for non-managed systems was quite compelling," he said. "I was simply not able to get all of that deployed at the time. If we do move forward with some kind of NAC solution, I will probably start with Symantec (Sygate) unless there is a compelling reason to look elsewhere. I doubt we will be doing anything like the Cisco or Microsoft solution anytime soon."
For more information call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at www.sencilo.com
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Juniper Networks Positioned in Leaders Quadrant of Leading Analyst Firm's Magic Quadrant for Network Intrusion Prevention Systems - March 14, 2008
SUNNYVALE, Calif., February 27, 2008 — Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, today announced it has been positioned in the "Leaders" quadrant of Gartner's recently released report: Magic Quadrant for Network Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) Appliances, 1H08.1 A leading worldwide IT research and advisory firm, Gartner evaluated vendors according to a set of criteria focused on the company's ability to execute and completeness of vision in the IPS market.
According to Gartner, "The network IPS appliance market is composed of in-line devices that perform full-stream assembly and deep inspection of network traffic, providing detection using several methods, including signatures, protocol anomaly detection and behavioral or heuristics." In the report, Gartner states, "Leaders demonstrate balanced progress and effort in all execution and vision categories. Their actions raise the competitive bar for all products in the market, and they can change the course of the industry. To remain leaders, vendors must have demonstrated a track record of delivering successfully in enterprise IPS deployments and in winning competitive assessments. Leaders produce products that provide high signature quality and low latency, are innovating with or ahead of customers' challenges and have a range of models."
"We believe Juniper's placement in the Leaders quadrant for network IPS, following our recent placements in the Leaders quadrant in Gartner's Magic Quadrants for Enterprise Network Firewalls2, SSL VPN3 and WAN Optimization Controllers4, reflects our commitment to delivering best-in-class technologies that set new metrics in high-performance networking," said Mark Bauhaus, executive vice president and general manager of Service Layer Technologies at Juniper Networks. "Backed by Juniper Networks' security team offering market leading response to threats and vulnerabilities, our Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP) appliances consistently offer comprehensive security coverage against an increasingly evolving threat landscape. Additionally, with centralized management that manages all firewall, Unified Threat Management (UTM) and IDP appliances, our customers have even greater choice and control in quickly meeting their security requirements while improving operational efficiencies."
To view a copy of "Magic Quadrant for Network Intrusion Prevention System Appliances, 1H08," compliments of Juniper, go to: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/juniper/vol3/article3/article3.html.
About the Magic Quadrant
The Gartner Magic Quadrants are copyrighted 2007 and 2008 by Gartner, Inc., and are reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
About Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks, Inc. is the leader in high-performance networking. Juniper offers a high-performance network infrastructure that creates a responsive and trusted environment for accelerating the deployment of services and applications over a single network. This fuels high-performance businesses. Additional information can be found at www.juniper.net.
1) Gartner, Inc., "Magic Quadrant for Network Intrusion Prevention System Appliances, 1H08" by Greg Young and John Pescatore, February 14, 2008
2) Gartner, Inc., "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls, 2H07" by Greg Young and John Pescatore, September 13, 2007
3) Gartner, Inc., "Magic Quadrant for SSL VPN, North America, 3Q07" by John Girard, December 6, 2007
4) Gartner, Inc., "Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization Controllers, 2007" by Andy Rolfe and Joe Skorupa, December 14, 2007
For more information call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at www.sencilo.com
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Mimosa Systems Partners With Sencilo Solutions to Deliver Next-Generation Content Archiving to City of Safety Harbor - March 11, 2008
SANTA CLARA, Calif. - (Business Wire) Mimosa Systems, a leader in Live Content Archiving solutions, today announced that it has partnered with Sencilo Solutions, a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions, to deploy the next-generation Mimosa™ NearPoint™ for Microsoft® Exchange Server for the City of Safety Harbor, Fla. The city standardized on NearPoint™ in 2006 to assure the retention, discovery and recovery of its mission critical email environment in a single solution.
Safety Harbor is a small city of almost 18,000 near Tampa. Like many small cities, Safety Harbor has been forced to deal with a big problem — constantly growing email volume — with limited IT resources and budget. To add to the complexity of the problem, the city must comply with the Florida’s Public Records and Sunshine Laws that mandate all municipalities and government agencies retain and provide access to public records including email. That means that even a small city like Safety Harbor must be able to ensure retention and rapid discovery of all its email content. In addition, the city sits in the center of the hurricane zone and the city wanted a solution that would allow them to recover quickly if a natural disaster were to strike.
“Email was increasing at alarming rates and we couldn’t delete old emails because of the requirements of the Sunshine Law,” said James Burke, Information Systems Manager for the City of Safety Harbor. “We were hitting long-term capacity issues and public records requests were taking an inordinate amount of time before we discovered Mimosa. NearPoint has allowed us to address our capacity requirements while streamlining our records retention and public records requests taking a huge burden off of IT resources.”
To address these issues the City of Safety Harbor turned to Sencilio Solutions, a leading Mimosa integration partner to deliver the archiving solution. Sencilo is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. The company’s mission is to provide leading-edge, turnkey solutions for leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses.
“The Mimosa NearPoint archiving solution is a perfect complement to our arsenal of advanced storage and security offerings,” said Brian McCarthy, CEO, Sencilo Solutions. “Local governments are faced with shrinking budgets and the City of Safety Harbor is no exception. Our commitment is to deliver cutting-edge products that deliver rapid value out of the box without having to throw an army of resources and professional services at the problem. Mimosa’s content archiving software was easy to install and we had the entire solution up and running in a single day without impacting end-user productivity.”
Key Mimosa NearPoint features that were particularly important to the City of Safety Harbor include:
- Continuous Capture and Archiving of Exchange Data: including all metadata, emails, folders, deletions, calendars, contacts, notes, tasks to quickly identify relevant content as part of a discovery or disclosure request.
- Automated Exchange Storage Management: Mimosa NearPoint has reduced the city’s storage requirements by moving attachments, based on policies of age and size, to the NearPoint server. The NearPoint Mailbox Extension feature allows Safety Harbor’s IT staff to define policies that stub attachments in Exchange while still giving users seamless access to the email.
- Simple “One-Click” Recovery: Mimosa NearPoint gives the City of Safety Harbor continuous protection of all its Exchange information. NearPoint preserves all Exchange information disk and allows users to restore individual messages themselves via Outlook and allows administrators to restore complete mailboxes and databases with simple “one-click” operations.
“So many municipalities are looking for an easy-to-deploy compliance solution that gives them iron-clad assurance of discovery, information access, retention and business continuity,” said Christophe Culine, senior vice president of sales, Mimosa Systems. “Without a solution like Mimosa, cities can waste valuable resources trying to comply with legislation like the Sunshine Law and Freedom of Information Act. The City of Safety Harbor is proactive in their content management strategy and we are pleased to include them to our growing roster of government customers.”
About Sencilo Solutions
Sencilo Solutions is a Orlando Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo’s professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
About Mimosa NearPoint
Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server addresses critical customer requirements around email information archiving, eDiscovery, regulatory compliance, business continuity, and storage optimization. Mimosa NearPoint provides legal search workflow, immediate mailbox and message recovery, disaster recovery, email archiving, and self-service search and access in one solution. By leveraging cost-effective storage, NearPoint also optimizes email storage and reduces overall infrastructure costs.
About Mimosa
Mimosa Systems, Inc. delivers next-generation information management solutions for information immediacy, discovery, and continuity. Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server is the industry’s most comprehensive information management software solution for Microsoft Exchange, unifying email archiving, recovery, and storage management. With options for eDiscovery and disaster recovery, NearPoint ensures litigation readiness and email continuity while leveraging cost-effective disk technologies to optimize email storage growth.
ILM, more performance, fewer drives, green storage from Compellent Technologies - February 28, 2008
February 28, 2008—Tampa and Orlando Florida Compellent has fine-tuned the way its SAN software writes data to disk drives with new techniques that could boost performance and capacity utilization while simultaneously reducing disk drive requirements by up to 80%, according to company officials.
The latest release of the company's SAN software, Storage Center 4.0, features new software applications such as Fast Track, Thin Import, and Free Space Recovery, all of which help reduce the number of disk drives required, effectively reducing total cost of ownership and energy consumption for true green storage.
The Fast Track application automatically places active data on the outer tracks of a disk drive to speed access to frequently used information like ILM. Compellent's vice president of marketing, Bruce Kornfeld, says competitive offerings place entire volumes on perimeter tracks, while Fast Track only moves frequently accessed data to the outer tracks of the drive, which accelerates performance and reduces drive requirements.
"If a storage system can differentiate between inner and outer tracks on the drive you can avoid putting inactive data or unallocated space on the outer tracks, so you get more performance out of the drives and you can buy fewer of them," says Kornfeld. "This technology can lower storage costs by 50% by reducing the number of drives vs. EqualLogic or Dell."
Also new to Storage Center 4.0, the Thin Import feature reduces disk drive requirements by converting existing data into thin-provisioned volumes as it is copied to a Compellent SAN vs. EMC or HP.
Steve Duplessie, founder and senior storage analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, says the Thin Import technology has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of storage in Florida data centers.
"Imagine being able to pull all the over-provisioned, over-allocated, and under-utilized capacity off your old expensive arrays and instantly apply just-in-time thin provisioning to those volumes," says Duplessie. "It is tantamount to taking your 25% utilized storage infrastructure to 80%. Think of what that would mean for everything from consolidation, green storage, footprint to backup."
Storage Center 4.0 also includes a feature called Free Space Recovery, which reclaims unused space in Windows environments, and Application Optimizer, a tool that tunes the size of data transfers within the SAN to match I/O performance for different applications.
A Storage Center 4.0 QuickStart ILM Bundle is priced from approximately $57,200 with 7.2TB of capacity. vs. Lefthand Networks, Dell or EqualLogic, a single controller, and the Fast Track, Thin Import, and Free Space Recovery applications. Users can also purchase the new Storage Center 4.0 applications and controller as individual upgrades.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-area-network.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection
Symantec launches service option for Backup Exec 12D - February 20, 2008
Orlando Florida Symantec Corp.'s much anticipated data backup Storage as a Service (SaaS) is finally seeing the light of day. The Symantec Protection Network (SPN) will now be generally available as a standalone service, as well as a backup media option in the latest version of Backup Exec, also unveiled today.
The two new services are called Symantec Online Backup and Symantec Online Storage for Backup Exec. The Online Backup option accesses the SPN storage facility through a Web portal that includes a user's registration and account information, as well as access to provisioning tools for the service. The portal is eventually intended to support other SaaS offerings from Symantec with tabular views in a single console. Pricing for the service is $25 per month for 5 GB of storage.
Online Storage for Backup Exec allows the SPN service to be managed through the Backup Exec interface and does not require customers to install a separate software agent on the client server. The Backup Exec option lets organizations back up to tape or disk and then to the SPN as an off-site option. Pricing for this option is $38 per month for 10 GB. Users of both services can add or subtract capacity on a monthly subscription basis.
"Symantec from Orlando Florida has tried to support users through a Web-based portal before and acknowledges that the customer service portal launched after the rollout of Backup Exec 11d was a failure. According to Chris Schin, Symantec's director of product management for SPN, the circumstances around SPN's launch are less complicated than they were with the customer support portal, which launched at the same time as a new product and a new licensing policy. The team that runs SPN also has experience managing a large multitenant infrastructure with Symantec's existing managed security services, he added.
"Symantec began beta testing SPN last April. The service was supposed to have been available before the end of 2007 but languished as rivals EMC Corp. and CommVault Systems Inc. launched their own data backup SaaS offerings last month, says Brian McCarthy of Sencilo Solutions in St. Petersburg Florida.
Schin said Symantec originally intended to launch a standalone service but decided to hold off until it was integrated with existing products. "We heard strong feedback from a significant number of customers that they wanted us to keep their current environments intact," he said. "We decided to reallocate our resources and work toward launching two services."
Uncertainty over how to position SaaS may also have played a part, according to Eric Burgener, a Taneja Group analyst. "One of the strategic concerns for Symantec has always been how to grow revenue for NetBackup and Backup Exec without letting them cannibalize each other," he said. "There are additional potential problems SaaS presents to license-based revenue streams."
Backup Exec 12 -- Incremental updates
Symantec's Windows data backup software is getting a minor facelift to go with the new online backup option. "These updates aren't what I'd consider a major leap forward," Burgener said. "There are some incremental improvements and integration with some previous acquisitions."
The updates include a more granular restore capability for Microsoft Exchange. Backup Exec now allows mailbox-level recovery of data from one backup, akin to CDP. In previous versions of Backup Exec, mailbox-level restores required users to make two backups of the same information. According to Symantec's Backup Exec director of product management Brian Greene, some customers reported that granular Exchange backups took 10 times as long as regular backups.
The new version also allows customers to back up Exchange, SharePoint and Active Directory from a snapshot, rather than the production host, and allows backups to be sent to destinations other than the media server, such as a SAN or removable hard drive.
"Not having to back up Exchange separately is a huge advantage," said Nick Joseph, network administrator for business systems certification registrar Orion Register Inc. Joseph said full backups take about 16 hours in tests with version 12. Prior to this release, his backups took up to three days.
Backup Exec 12 can now back up the Enterprise Vault data archive and use Symantec's ThreatCon security threat monitoring system to trigger automatic backups. Backup Exec is also the first data backup application to be certified with Microsoft Windows Server 2008.
Symantec officials said there are no planned changes to Backup Exec's licensing for VMware, which currently requires a backup software agent for each guest host. Joseph said this is the most pressing item left on his wish list.
"VMware backup doesn't seem to be as complete [with Backup Exec] as with NetBackup," Joseph said. Symantec added support for granular virtual machine restores for its NetBackup 6.5 enterprise backup application last June, but that remains missing from its Windows-based Backup Exec product.
"I'd like the ability to just back up VMs and restore them like any other server," Joseph said.
System Recovery 8 -- Consolidation to come?
Symantec made the same upgrades to its Backup Exec System Recovery 8 bare metal restore application as it did to Backup Exec 12, except for the SPN integration. "We wanted to have these features available for people who use just one product," Greene said.
Asked about the possibility of merging the two products into one, Greene said, "That's a good question, but it's something I can't talk about today."
Sencilo Solutions is a recognized leader in the design and deployment of primary storage. Through extensive experience in the storage industry, we have developed a deep understanding of how technology can solve operational problems. The greatest challenge that organizations face is knowing which technology will help and which will not.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-protection.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland, Cape Canaveral
Other Projects: DR BC Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar CX4
Unitrends enhances data protection appliances - February 17, 2008
Watchout Symantec Backup Exec and Netbackup Unitrends has announced a new version of its Data Protection and Rapid Recovery ( bare metal) platform and a high-capacity model of its Multi-Drive Archive System. The integrated data protection and vaulting appliances now offer support for more than 30 operating systems, VMware virtual servers, and 30TB of removable disk capacity for SMB and SMEs.
Data Protection and Rapid Recovery 3.1 includes integrated support for VMware's ESX 3.X Server Backup and VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) and improved Windows integration, providing support for virtualization environments as well as Microsoft SQL MSDE and Exchange 2007.
Unitrends has beefed up its archiving platform in several different areas, according to Maria Ellison, senior vice president of product services management. Upgrades include expanded application support and support for virtual environments via API integration with VMware Consolidated Backup. However, she says, the "game changer" for Unitrends is its new central management console.
"We had an adequate Linux user interface in the past, but it was not centralized. Everything had to be managed separately," says Ellison. "We benchmarked our new interface for ease of use against the big boys, including Symantec Backup Exec, Microsoft Data Protection Manager, Commvault and Windows Home Server, and we believe we are on parity with those products."
The integrated Centralized Management Console provides the ability to manage multiple Unitrends Data Protection Units (DPUs) and Data Protection Vaults (DPVs) from a single console using a new user interface with recovery and configuration tools and SQL status reporting.
Software enhancements to the DPV appliances include a performance boost designed to reduce vaulting windows and improve bandwidth utilization by enabling block-level data to be transmitted more quickly from Unitrends' DPUs to its DPVs.
On the hardware side, Unitrends has given its Multi-Drive Archive System a shot in the arm when it comes to scalability. The system—which includes 4TB of raw capacity—now allows customers to use removable disk technology for archiving data in the range of 10TB to 30TB of uncompressed data, depending upon the specific compression ratios of the data.
The higher-capacity Multi-Drive Archive is also supported by the new Data Protection and Rapid Recovery 3.1 platform and includes up to four drives per archive and a RAID-0 configuration, and can be installed as a 1U box connected to a DPU.
All new DPUs are shipping with the version 3.1 software at a starting price of just under $5,000. Existing customers with current support/maintenance contracts are eligible for a free software upgrade to version 3.1.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-area-network.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection
Infoblox hooks into Windows DNS - February 15, 2008
Infoblox has launched an appliance designed to help manage DNS and DHCP addressing on Windows servers without swapping out existing systems
Infoblox IPAM WinConnect sits in the datacentre and talks to Windows DNS and DHCP servers via the network, providing IT managers with a common view into both environments as well as automation and administrative features. It would augment existing Windows IP address management tools, according to industry watchers, who say many customers depend on out-of-date and insufficient tools to manage IT addresses.
“Forgotten services like DHCP, DNS, and RADIUS are critical network services components that dictate availability. Yet most are woefully out of date, stagnating on non-enterprise-grade infrastructure, with few security mechanisms," wrote Robert Whiteley, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, in a recent report on IP address management.
Infoblox said its appliance adds more functionality to existing Microsoft DNS and DHCP server deployments. For instance, the product automatically catalogues devices on the network, eliminating the need for IT staff to maintain spreadsheets or other home-grown approaches to tracking IP data. It also gives IT staff a look at current and historic IT usage and lets managers delegate administrative jobs into roles, which is critical for compliance purposes, the company said.
"IT managers need detailed audit logs of who did what and when to every device. And a vast majority of organisations using Windows are tracking that with spreadsheets, which is very manual and error-prone," said Richard Kagan, Infoblox vice president of marketing. "The native tools offered with Microsoft aren't as rich as they need to be so this appliance is designed to help people keep managing DNS and DCHP with Microsoft and a little help from Infoblox."
Infoblox, which competes with the likes of BlueCat Networks, DNSstuff and Secure64, said the appliance uses standard Microsoft protocols, so no changes are needed on the Windows servers. Forrester's Whiteley said such appliances could be ideal for greenfield environments looking to get started with IP address, DNS, DHCP and RADIUS management.
"If you have a greenfield opportunity to build a utility-grade network, then start with an appliance-oriented vendor like Infoblox or BlueCat," Whiteley wrote.
Infoblox IPAM WinConnect is scheduled to be available in December. It runs on Infoblox-250, -550, -1050 and -1550 platforms. Pricing for the IPAM WinConnect on an Infoblox-250 platform starts at about $3,000.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/security-threat-management.php
About Sencilo Solutions
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Hitachi (HDS) ships VTL bundles with Diligent deduplication - February 12, 2008
Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is tweaking its virtual tape library (VTL) platform with three bundled configurations of servers, disk arrays and ProtecTier data deduplication software from Diligent Technologies Inc.
When HDS began shipping VTLs through an OEM deal with Diligent in 2006, customers had to choose an HDS array for storage and spec out processing power. HDS offered services to help customers with the design but now has identified common configurations to sell in bundles through channel partners, like Sencilo Solutions of Orlando Florida. The packages are meant to simplify deployment at medium-sized businesses, but analysts say the HDS platform needs to be more than just a VTL to find a real foothold in that market.
The HDS bundles are the Virtual Tape Library Appliance Model 500M, 1000L and 1000E. The 500M is based on the HDS AMS 500 storage array with up to 16 drives and 8 TB to 20 TB capacity, a dual dual-core processor server and the midmarket version of Diligent's ProtecTier software. Models 1000L and 1000E are based on the AMS 1000 disk array and quad dual-core servers. The 1000L supports 15 TB to 30 TB and up to 256 disks. The 1000E also supports up to 256 disks but can store 30 TB to 50 TB.
HDS claims 200 MBps throughput performance on the 500M, 300 MBps on the 1000L and 400 MBps on the 1000E. The performance numbers are based on the observations of channel partners working in customer environments, according to Victor Nemechek, HDS product marketing manager for VTL, although he could not be more specific as to how the numbers were calculated.
Other storage vendors have recently started shipping what had been software-only data deduplication products with pretuned hardware to boost performance or ease setup for users. EMC Corp. did that with Avamar's data deduplication backup software when it announced the Avamar Data Store in September, and FalconStor Software Inc. in January coupled its Single Instance Repository (SIR) dedupe with a new clustered hardware architecture in the fifth generation of its VTL software. "End-user customers have told us in primary research that they want something preconfigured," said Laura DuBois, an IDC analyst. "It's too hard to architect and optimize hardware while putting in new software as well, something FalconStor has yet to figure-out" say Gartner, Inc.'s Magic Quadrant.
However, analysts warn that appliances could run into scalability problems. Nemechek said HDS has yet to determine how to upgrade users from one model to another. "It would be nice to have some modeling tools so channel partners could work with customers on the right size appliance," said Dave Russell, a Gartner analyst. "The last thing you want to do is have a partner accidentally undersize a configuration," Russell said. If users outgrow an appliance now, they usually add another one, and Russell said he hopes to see Diligent eventually add clustering support so customers can pool multiple devices. Sencilo Solutions President and Storage Veteran Brian McCarthy states "HDS has assisted us more then once with sizing tools and guidance, besides Data Domain has to send a Storage Engineer on-site to size a backup project, something most resellers are not big fans". Asked why McCarthy is not a big fan of having Data Domain assist them, he stated that "Data Domain has under cut him in two deals and taken deals direct, even after they were registered by Sencilo."
As HDS and Diligent try to expand into the midmarket, they may face another issue: Data Domain Inc. has already established a strong presence there with customers and with partners. Unlike Diligent, Data Domain offers a NAS interface as an option. "Newer backup products are beginning to evolve to address some of the reasons for the VTL interface, and everyone's in the dedupe game," according to DuBois. "The more interesting question is what the long-term strategy is for data protection and secondary storage." As for Data Domain standing between HDS and a sucessful product offering, "let's just say, Data Domain will be road kill along the way," says McCarthy of Sencilo.
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection
Barracuda Networks Launches First Enterprise-Class Web Application Controller for SMB Market - February 9, 2008
Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG Offers Robust Web site Application Protection at an Affordable Price
Campbell, Calif., Feb. 7, 2008 – Barracuda Networks, Inc., the worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances, today launched the Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG, the first and only enterprise-class Web Application Controller available for small and medium businesses. Ideal for SMBs on a tight IT budget, this is the first appliance to fully secure Web applications and ensure compliance with regulations, such as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for $10,000.
“We are essentially bringing plug-and-play PCI compliance to the mass market,” said Stephen Pao, vice president of product management for Barracuda Networks. “Until now, most businesses in the SMB space were facing very expensive and time-consuming audits of their Web infrastructures in order to achieve PCI compliance. Further, these audits would be required every time the organization makes a change to their Web applications, so it is very possible that such costs could very quickly overwhelm a business.
“With the Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG small and medium businesses will no longer have to worry about the recurring costs of application source code audits and instead they can achieve PCI DSS compliance without breaking the budget,” added Pao.
As the June 30, 2008 deadline mandating e-commerce businesses of all sizes be compliant with requirement 6.6 of PCI DSS quickly approaches, many SMB organizations have been left with no choice but to prepare for very expensive and very detailed custom application code reviews. The Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG now provides these organizations with a cost-effective and powerful solution that will protect and maintain their Web infrastructure as well as satisfy PCI DSS requirements.
Comprehensive Web site Protection
The Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG brings the same award-winning protection from Web site threats, such as unauthorized access, data theft, denial of service or defacement, offered in the full Barracuda Web Application Controller line. The Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG secures against all common Web application threats including SQL injections, cross-site scripting attacks, session tampering and buffer overflows. Operating as a full proxy the Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG inspects both request and response traffic, providing the capabilities to not only block inbound attacks, but also to shield SMB business Web sites from hackers and to filter outbound traffic, preventing sensitive data leakage, such as Social Security and credit card numbers. In addition the Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG integrates traffic management capabilities including caching, compression and load balancing, enabling Web application security as well as an increase in performance and availability of the applications. Incorporating these features into the Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG eliminates the need for multiple devices on the network, which ultimately brings down the user’s total cost of ownership.
The Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG is the first model to be added to the Barracuda Web Application Controller product line since Barracuda Networks completed the acquisition of NetContinuum, the leading provider of Web Application Firewalls, in September 2007.
“One of our goals in acquiring NetContinuum was to deliver industry-leading capabilities to a set of customers who had previously been unable to deploy Web site security solutions,” said Pao. “With the launch of the new Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG we are combining Web application security, traffic management and SSL acceleration into an easy to use and affordable solution for protecting Web sites of all sizes.”
Pricing and Availability
The Barracuda Application Gateway NC 500 AG is currently available and priced at $10,000. International pricing varies by region. For more information, visit http://www.sencilo.com/security-web-application-controllers.php
About Barracuda Web Application Controllers
Barracuda Web Application Controllers, including both the Barracuda Web Application Firewall and Barracuda Application Gateway, protect Web sites from attackers leveraging protocol or application vulnerabilities to instigate unauthorized access, data theft, denial of service or defacement. Designed to deliver comprehensive Web security, Barracuda Web Application Controllers act as a proxy for Web traffic to insulate Web servers from direct access by hackers, enforces data security standards, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and secures Web sites against the top 10 major Web vulnerabilities compiled by Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). Available in two models, the Barracuda Web Application Firewall provides Web applications and Web services with complete protection against malicious attacks. The Barracuda Application Gateway, also available in three models, enhances the powerful Barracuda Web Application Firewall to integrate traffic management capabilities for increased performance and availability.
About Barracuda Networks Inc.
Barracuda Networks Inc. is the worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances. Barracuda Networks also provides world-class IM protection, application server load balancing and message archiving appliances. More than 50,000 companies, including Coca-Cola, FedEx, Harvard University, IBM, L'Oreal, NASA and Europcar, are protecting their networks with Barracuda Networks’ solutions. Barracuda Networks' success is due to its ability to deliver easy to use, comprehensive solutions that solve the most serious issues facing customer networks without unnecessary add-ons, maintenance, lengthy installations or per user license fees. Barracuda Networks is privately held with its headquarters in Campbell, Calif. Barracuda Networks has offices in eight international locations and distributors in more than 80 countries worldwide.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/products-security.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Key words: Barracuda Networks Security RSA Encryption Cisco Decru Neoscale EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant SSL SonicWall Secure Computing Firewall VPN Endpoint
Report: SPAM Accounts for 90-95% of All Email - January 26, 2008
In 2001, spam accounted for an estimated 5% of our email. In 2007, it clogs our inboxes to the tune of 90-95% of all email sent, according to a new report released today by Barracuda Networks. Barracuda, a leading vendor of spam filtering technology, based their analysis on the over 1 billion emails that the company's software scans each day. The year-over-year increase appears to indicate the failure of the US federal CAN-SPAM Act, which was passed in 2004 when spam only accounted for about 70% of all email sent.
Last month we reported on a study from research firm IDC that predicted that 2007 would be the first time that spam out numbered legit email. Our readers didn't think that sounded right: surely spam outnumbered legit email years ago. "Spam sure as hell surpassed legit emails in my inbox -- years ago. Mine. My mom, dad, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, every single friend I've talked to about it, my cat and dog, Boobo my hamster, everyone..." wrote one commenter.
Barracuda's report corroborates those feelings and calls into question the IDC report. Certainly, from my own personal experience, it is a lot easier to believe Barracuda. I use three email accounts on a regular basis, and across them, I get about 2500-3000 pieces of spam each week. I get a lot of legit email, as well, but not enough to outnumber the unsolicited stuff. Luckily (for most users), I am in the minority. According to the report, 65% of email users get less than 10 pieces of junk mail per day (half get less than 5). Just 13% find themselves in the unhappy position of receiving more than 50 spam emails per day.
Barracuda's report also found that spam is not only annoying, but it is the most annoying form of junk advertising. 57% of respondents to a survey question asking what the worst form unsolicited advertising was said spam, compared to just 31% for postal junk mail and 12% for telemarketers.
Unfortunately, spammers continue to evolve their tactics to beat the filters. In 2006 there was a rise of image spam and botnets. This past year, spammers were seen using attachments (like PDF files) as well as using more advanced identity obfuscation techniques.
The good news is that spam filtering technology is evolving right along with the spammers, and it works well. Thanks to filters, I only see about 3-4% of the spam I get (which is still a lot given the immense volume). Here's to a spam free 2008 -- hey, a guy can dream, right?
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/products-security.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Key words: Barracuda Networks Security RSA Encryption Cisco Decru Neoscale EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant SSL SonicWall Secure Computing Firewall VPN Endpoint
