Datacraft and EMC form strategic partnership to deliver automated networked storage solutions in Asia Pacific

Bangkok--Dec 6--124 Communications Singapore, - Datacraft Asia, the leading independent IT services company in the Asia Pacific, today announced a strategic partnership with EMC Corporation, the world leader in information storage solutions. Under the global strategic partnership with Datacraft's majority shareholder, Dimension Data (LSE: DDT), Datacraft is now able to incorporate EMC's premier networked storage platforms and open storage management software into Datacraft's Application Network solutions for its blue chip customer base in the Asia Pacific region, while giving EMC a strong support for region-wide sales and delivery. Further, Dimension Data /Datacraft is also appointed as an EMC Authorised Service Network (ASN). EMC's ASN program is a community of select service partners that acts as a seamless and indistinguishable extension of EMC's service delivery infrastructure to deliver the deepest technical service talent for storage networking. "Storage is at the foundation of all applications and is therefore a fundamental element of our Application Networks vision of integrated network and application infrastructure," said Bill Padfield, chief operating officer of Datacraft Asia. "EMC is the undisputed leader in networked storage. Through this strategic partnership with EMC, we can now combine their highly reliable, scalable and available networked storage environment with other network elements and our professional, managed and training services to create dependable solutions that address our customers' infrastructure and business application requirements." "Entering the networked storage market opens up huge pull-through services opportunities for Datacraft in areas such as network storage (SAN & NAS) implementation, storage consolidation, automated storage management, backup and recovery, and high availability, " said Ron Cattell, chief executive officer of Datacraft Asia. "As we ramp up our Storage Surveyor assessment services and Storage Primer implementation services, these offerings will become key contributor to the company's service revenue." "The convergence of data networking and storage is accelerating the migration of direct attached storage to networked storage as more organisations can now quickly realise ROI and lower the total operating cost of their information infrastructure," said Steve Fitz, President for Asia Pacific/ Japan, EMC Corporation. "Partnership with leading market players like Datacraft is a key part of EMC's overall business strategy to penetrate new markets and gain market share in Asia Pacific. This is really a highly synergistic partnership. By complementing each other's strengths, we can now offer our enterprise and service provider customers world-class networked storage solutions that are backed by a tremendous portfolio of intellectual property and unique, regional delivery capabilities," Fitz added. Datacraft has lost no time in landing its first network information storage customer, a leading service provider in Taiwan, which has commissioned a remote Disaster Recovery (DR) centre for its billing system and Datacraft-supplied service order processing systems. The Datacraft DR solution incorporates a pair of EMC Symmetrix 8830 enterprise storage systems, along with all the necessary network infrastructure and 7X24 Insite monitoring and management, to reliably mirror the customer's mission-critical data in real time over a 150 kilometre network. Organisations are rapidly moving to networked storage environment to enjoy both financial and technical benefits. Key drivers in the consolidation of storage include the need to improve utilisation, security and manageability levels while increasing information availability. At the present pace of growth, IDC expects networked storage to account for almost 77 per cent of worldwide external storage systems revenue and around 67 per cent of the global disk storage revenue by 2005. Networked storage platforms, information management software, and storage-related services therefore represent a very significant market opportunity for the Datacraft-EMC partnership. Besides integrating EMC networked storage products into its application network solutions, Datacraft is taking on an important training role for EMC. Training Partners, Datacraft's wholly owned IT professional training subsidiary, have signed a letter of intent with EMC to deliver product training on behalf of EMC across Asia Pacific and will start to incorporate storage subjects into its own solution-oriented curriculum. About EMC EMC Corporation is the world leader in information storage systems, software, networks and services, providing automated networked storage solutions that enable organisations of all sizes to better and more cost-effectively manage, protect and share their information. More information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com. About Datacraft Datacraft Asia is the leading independent IT services company in Asia Pacific. It specialises in providing IT solutions and services that enable businesses to operate seamlessly across Application Networks. Application Networks are the convergence of two previous separate areas of IT: application integration and network infrastructure. The Group's expertise in networking integration, application deployment and global managed services makes it uniquely positioned to deliver the IT solutions that businesses need to connect information, applications, business processes, people and organisations. A member of the worldwide Dimension Data, Datacraft Asia is listed on the main board of the Singapore Exchange and is a component company of the Straits Times Index. Anchored by a distributed headquarters in Hong Kong and Singapore, Datacraft spans more than 50 offices and 1,500 staff in 13 Asia Pacific markets. More information about Datacraft Asia can be found on the Web at www.datacraft-asia.com. For further information, please contact: Chaiwat Simawattana (124 Communications Co., Ltd.) Tel: 02-662 2266 [email protected] End. -SN-

• ข่าวDatacraft Asia
• ข่าวDimension Data
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