Lakeview Bundles High Availability as a Service with MIMIX Vault

Published: February 7, 2006

by Alex Woodie

In a bid to boost its business among small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), Lakeview Technology last week launched a new hosted disaster recovery and high availability offering for iSeries and other platforms. With MIMIX Vault, Lakeview partners hosting the solution can help SMB customers cut the costs of buying, installing, and maintaining a DR or HA environment by up to 90 percent, a Lakeview official says, and gain the business continuity assurances that such technology provides.

One of the knocks on high availability software for OS/400 servers historically has been the high cost. Until recently, few companies could get by with an initial outlay of less than a $100,000 for hardware, software, and services for an HA project-and often quite a bit more. The cost has come down in recent years as a result of new OS/400 technologies like remote journaling and increased competition, but the cost of HA or sophisticated DR is still prohibitive for the majority of iSeries shops.

However, renewed interest in Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery models has opened the technology door to those who were previously priced out of the market. By sharing the cost of backup hardware, which has historically been one of the biggest cost components of a HA environment, and tapping into the know-how of seasoned experts, smaller iSeries shops can begin benefiting from business continuity technologies.

This is Lakeview's basic game plan for MIMIX Vault, which utilizes multiple HA and DR products, including MIMIX HA1 and HA Lite for OS/400, DR1 for OS/400; replication solutions for Linux and Unix via the EchoStream, HACAMP, and HA Clusters software and software expertise it has acquired over the last several years; and replication solutions for Windows via its MIMIX for Windows product, which is a re-branded version of NSI Software's DoubleTake.

At this point, Lakeview is talking about three partners it has signed up for MIMX Vault. These partners include AgVantage, a developer of OS/400-based software for farmers; Mainline, a large IBM system reseller; and Avnet, one of the three primary distributors of the iSeries server.

The largest current MIMIX Vault customer base is probably at AgVantage of Rochester, Minnesota. The company has 45 of its customers remotely using the MIMX DR1 product, which provides them with a recovery time objective (RTO) of four to eight hours. "With MIMIX Vault, our customers can take care of their important business issues while we take care of their information availability priorities," says Michelle Blomberg, president AgVantage.

In addition to these three partners, more MIMIX Vault partners are in the works, and the program could have up to 12 participants by the end of the year, says Ed Vesely, vice president of worldwide marketing for Lakeview. The program was created to accommodate different RTO and recovery point objectives (RPOs) that customers require, including real-time failovers in the event of a disaster. It could even involve a hosted implementation of OS/400 clustering technology, if anybody wanted it.

Lakeview's motto for MIMX Vault is "no headaches," Vesely says. "No additional hardware, no additional headcount, no remote backup data center to administer. Just go about your business," he says. "For a monthly subscription fee, these partners are enabling the SMB to really focus on their core business" and stop worrying about the safety of their data in the event of a disaster.

Compared to implementing a Lakeview HA or DR solution in-house, the MIMIX Vault program can save customers 80 percent or more "just in hardware and software alone," Vesely says. "It's probably closer to 90 percent. It's an order of magnitude greater."

Lakeview is working to certify partner's data centers for MIMIX Vault, and has plans to introduce a new DR1 Enterprise Manager product next month that will make it easier for partners to manage multiple customers in a single instance of the DR1 product, he says. For more information, see www.lakeviewtech.com.