SafeData Joins Midrange Alliance Program

Published: November 29, 2006

by Dan Burger

The Microsoft Midrange Alliance Program (MAP) added another independent software vendor to its team as the data protection company, SafeData, made the decision to participate in the efforts at bringing together IBM AS/400, iSeries, and System i users with the Windows and .NET supporters.

MAP was organized so that technology, service, and application partners could work together to extend applications outside of IBM's Java-based strategies and provide another option for deriving more value from their System i investments.

SafeData hopes to play a role in this by helping companies with a mixture of platforms protect data, minimize downtime, and recover and restore data quickly. It is able to support high availability and disaster recovery needs that bridge midrange and Windows environments.

"Many of our clients operate in hybrid environments combining both the IBM midrange and Windows platforms," said Larry Putterman, chairman of SafeData. "The Midrange Alliance Program provides us with a community of technology partners that we can extend to our clients when they are in search of specific technologies that run in mixed-platform environments."

SafeData products mirror data center systems. During either planned or unplanned downtime, its high availability software provides a switchable mirror for data and applications. It guarantees continuity in two hours or less.

The company will also offer disaster recovery products through the Microsoft-based program. The disaster recovery solutions are subscription based using technology from the electronic vaulting company, EVault. There is also a second option that uses a disk-to-disk restore and SafeData's data centers.

Microsoft and IBM each have programs specifically designed to work with independent software vendors that are looking for ways to expand their markets. SafeData's Putterman said, "The co-marketing opportunities with Microsoft will extend our reach into the Microsoft sales channel helping us to further build our client base."