Falconstor re-enters Australian market

Storage vendor Falconstor has renewed its interest in the Australian and New Zealand region and hired former DataCore technical sales director David Bull as the company pushes a new data services platform into the market.

Again taking on a technical sales director role, Bull joins the company with 20 years’ experience, including software-defined storage, virtualisation and cloud markets. An independant consultant for much of his career, Bull has worked with end users, integrators and vendors.

Most recently, Bull helped networking vendor DataCore establish its software-defined storage business across the ANZ region. He developed the company’s customer base, formed partnerships and set up a distribution network.

US-owned Falconstor closed its Australian offices in October 2013 after just 18 months of operation, but maintained a presence through its distributor, DataStor. The company underwent restructuring following losses in 2012 and 2013.

In its return to the Australian market, Falconstor is hoping to make an impact with its new software-designed-storage solution, Freestor.

“Enterprises in Australia and New Zealand are keen to update infrastructure to make storage more efficient, but as yet it's the wild, wild west for newer technologies like cloud, hybrid cloud, flash storage and software-defined storage,” Bull said.

“FreeStor is an innovative approach to combining emerging technologies and delivering strategic IT services on a subscription-based opex-friendly model, while also preserving existing storage investments for better lifespan and value.”

Alan Komet, executive vice president of worldwide field operations, said Bull was “an excellent torchbearer” to lead ANZ customers and partners toward the company’s new data centre infrastructure.

“The storage landscape is ripe for disruption by divorcing software from hardware, and this market will understand the benefits of FreeStor in both traditional data services like business continuity and recovery, plus new requirements like predictive analytics and multi-tenancy."