Symantec puts data storage on a 'diet'

Paul Lancaster, systems engineering director at Symantec Australia said the next phase of the  strategy will enable channel partners to help their customers tackle the issue of growing data-storage.

Symantec is moving deduplication closer to information sources by integrating the technology into its information management platforms: NetBackup, Backup Exec and Enterprise Vault, and centrally managing native deduplication as well as third-party deduplication appliances.

"Symantec continues to be a channel-led company, with the majority of our business flowing through our channel partners," said Lancaster.

He said the company is committed to providing its partners with market leading products and with traditional approaches to data management not proving effective in controlling the proliferation of business information, there is a lot of talk about data deduplication.  

"However, existing practises involve tackling deduplication onto the back of end of the data management process, which can lead to inefficiencies and increased complexity," he added.

"Symantec is advocating a new approach - integrating deduplication into various points of an organisations IT architecture.

"By integrating the technology into its information management platforms: NetBackup, Backup Exec and Enterprise Vault, Symantec is now moving deduplication closer to information sources so organisations can stop buying storage and re-use what they have, recover information faster and improve their return on virtualisation.

"With these product offerings, channel partners will be able to help their customers leverage deduplication to make their storage environment more efficient."

Symantec believes that channel partners have an opportunity to help organisations put their data storage on a diet, using a three step reduction program:

• Reduce data everywhere by moving deduplication technology closer to information sources
• Reduce deduplication complexity by providing centralized management for all forms of deduplication, both Symantec and partner technologies
• Reduce infrastructure by using deduplication to improve the return on server virtualization by providing storage consolidation, efficient virtual server protection and simplified management.

Symantec is also providing a single interface to manage backups using any combination of integrated deduplication software and third-party deduplicated storage through its OpenStorage API.