Maxava Claims 150 Customers Running HA in the Cloud

March 27, 2012 Alex Woodie

Maxava has more than 150 customers accessing its IBM i high availability (HA) software from a cloud provider, the company said last week. The revelation demonstrates the high level of growth that’s occurring in the HA cloud market.

A cloud-based high availability service makes perfect sense for organizations that can’t justify the purchase of a second IBM i server or the additional care and feeding that an HA application requires. By tapping into an HA cloud, an organization can utilize the cloud provider’s shared resources–including hardware, software, and skills–at a substantially lower investment point than if the organization tried to acquire the resources individually.

“Many businesses that run on IBM i do not have access to a backup datacenter or even to a backup IBM i server,” Maxava senior VP Simon O’Sullivan says in a press release. “These businesses want to focus on their core activities and leave their disaster recovery to be fully managed by a professional availability team that also provides datacenter services, 24×7 monitoring, and DR testing. The cloud provider can virtualize the backup IBM i server to host multiple customers to reduce hardware and datacenter costs.”

Maxava has been an active player in promoting HA clouds, which is the lone bright spot when it comes to the overall IBM i cloud market. The New Zealand-based company says its software has been cloud-enabled since 2005, and that its work with cloud service providers like Sungard Public Sector (formerly HTE) has driven the growth of Maxava-powered HA clouds.

The vendor also announced the launch of its new Maxava Cloud “microsite” at www.maxavacloud.com. (It’s a microsite because the website contains only one page that’s divided into several different areas.)

O’Sullivan says Maxava’s software is well-suited to the cloud for several reasons, including its capability to handle high transaction volumes, its accuracy, and graphical interfaces for use by administrators and customers.