Storage unit emerges out of Sun's shadow

StorageTek has unveiled its first combined tape and disk storage unit

StorageTek has unveiled its first combined tape and disk storage unit, following its recent $4.1bn acquisition by Sun.

StorageTek’s vice-president Nigel Dessau hailed IntelliStore as “the world’s first intelligent archive and compliance solution” designed for fixed content for the medium and enterprise market.

“Intelligent archiving is the third generation, after tape and disk. Combining the two allows customers to leverage the benefits of both, along with scalability, data management and the re-use of data after archiving,” Dessau said.

Paul Carr, business development director at StorageTek, said the channel is “crying out for such products”, and that it will play a pivotal sales role.

“The success of IntelliStore is dependent on the channel. For the roll-out we would prefer to partner with resellers playing in the archival software space,” Carr said.

When asked about the effect of the Sun acquisition, Dessau said: “It will be six months before we see any change after the Sun acquisition, then we will look at the channel structure.”

Richard Morris, technical director at VAR TriSys, said: “With the trend towards backing up to disk prior to archiving to tape, IntelliStore provides an ideal solution for customers and, combined with scalability, enables us to continue delivering best-of-breed solutions.”