3PAR, a provider of utility storage, announced that managed global IT service provider and 3PAR Cloud-Agile partner DataPipe now offers differentiated virtual private array (VPA) and disaster recovery (DR) services as part of their Stratosphere cloud services, which are powered by 3PAR Utility Storage.

DataPipe is the first member of the 3PAR Cloud-Agile program to offer its customers 3PAR Cloud-Agile ASSURED and 3PAR Cloud-Agile SECURED services through this program.

DTM Systems Corporation has achieved HP Virtualization Solutions Elite Partner status for Advanced Virtualization Expertise.
To be selected as an HP Virtualization Elite Partner, companies must provide expert service and support and offer clients complete virtualization solutions - from capacity planning assessments to design, installation, configuration, data migration, training, and post-installation services.

Western Digital has dismissed the growing trend of virtualisation among enterprises as a possible threat - and instead emphasised the indispensable value of internal hard drives in businesses.
Noel Timbol, business development manager at WD, said recent virtualisation efforts undertaken by companies have not made any dent on the sales of their Enterprise models.

Cloud-based computing is coming of age. The practice is emerging as a computing model that offers flexibility in infrastructure and investment.
The core of this service is utility that is backed by loosely coupled infrastructure that is self healing, geographically dispersed, designed for user self service, writes Samantha Sai for storage-biz.news.

SecurStore has warned that companies need to ensure a reliable IT disaster recovery plan is in place when times are tough.
The online, automated and managed data backup and recovery specialists said that the current economic difficulties meant that customer service is going to be the all important differentiator throughout 2009.

Faced with 100 per cent year-on-year data growth, the London council of Hillingdon’s IT team has decided to virtualise its servers.
It took the decision after being faced with the rapid growth of employees’ e-mail boxes, the need to retain documents such as benefits assessments records, and the increased use of digital images in planning applications and property and highway inspections.

With the wave of virtualisation sweeping across the business IT infrastructure, Mark Galpin, product marketing manager of Quantum, encourages IT managers to embrace the advantages of virtualisation after fully considering the impact on the back-up and recovery infrastructure.

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), part of the Hitachi Storage Solutions Group, is looking to continue its robust growth in the Asean region in its fiscal year that started in April 2008.
Ravi Rajendran, Asean general manager of HDS, said that in fiscal 2007, the company achieved 45 per cent year-on-year growth in Asean.