WOODCLIFF LAKE, New Jersey, April 21 /PRNewswire/ --

- Joint Solution for Data Protection in Consolidated Virtual Environment Accelerates Time-to-Value for Customers

Syncsort, a global leader in data protection software, today announced it has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. The VMware TAP program helps technology vendors integrate their products with VMware virtualization software and deliver timely, joint solutions to mutual customers. Through this alliance, Syncsort and VMware customers can achieve enhanced flexibility and performance of backup and recovery, reduced hardware requirements and ease-of-use for virtual environments. The result is a rapid return on investment for customers deploying server virtualization.

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Syncsort's Backup Express (BEX) has been uniquely architected to integrate seamlessly with VMware, reducing network traffic, storage requirements and backup windows by more than 90 percent. All this is accomplished with little or no impact on the performance of applications. BEX Instant Virtualization(TM) utilizes point-in-time server snapshots to provide immediate access to data, applications and operating system, permitting business to continue nearly uninterrupted. The solution makes it simple and cost-effective to protect critical applications and vital data in VMware environments.

Backup Express easily integrates with our existing VMware Infrastructure, said Timothy J. Patterson, Systems Administrator at Saginaw Valley State University. Using Backup Express Zero-Impact Virtual Machine Protection, VMware Infrastructure backups are fast, application-consistent and do not impact our virtual infrastructure. In addition, BEX Instant Virtualization allows us to quickly move data and applications between virtual machines and protects us against business interruptions.

Virtualization is bringing significant benefits to companies seeking to contain storage and server costs and support IT infrastructure consolidation while reducing environmental impact. BEX maximizes the benefits of virtualization by bringing high performance data protection and recovery to critical applications running on VMware ESX hosts.

Our customers can not only virtualize their smaller applications and test development servers but also move critical applications into production on VMware Infrastructure while still maintaining application performance and meeting the same demanding RPOs and RTOs production apps require, according to Harvey Tessler, Sr. VP of Marketing and Product Management at Syncsort. Deploying BEX within a VMware environment accelerates companies' return on investment in virtualization by efficiently managing infrastructure consolidation for all potential applications, thus speeding time-to-value.

Customers are using the capabilities of BEX to fully leverage their VMware investments. BEX's unique source-side data reduction makes our backups extremely fast while also significantly reducing the network and hardware footprint, and there is no degradation of application performance, said Ralph Casero, Unix System Administrator for insurance services company Avmed. It is simple to back up from physical to virtual, virtual to physical, or virtual to virtual. And our disaster recovery testing was a snap.

About the Alliance

We are excited to welcome Syncsort as the newest member of the VMware TAP program, said Bernie Mills, Senior Director, Alliance Programs, VMware. The VMware TAP program offers companies like Syncsort the tools and resources they need to develop high-value solutions that meet the needs of our mutual customers.

With more than 900 members worldwide, the VMware TAP program works with best-of-breed technology partners to provide them a comprehensive set of VMware technical and marketing services, support, tools and expertise to deliver enhanced value to joint customers.

About Syncsort Incorporated

Syncsort Incorporated is a leading developer of high-performance data management, data warehousing and data protection/recovery software. For over 40 years, Syncsort has built a reputation for superior product quality, high-performance software which also optimizes hardware resources, outstanding technical support and ease of use that increases productivity. Most of the Fortune 500 companies are Syncsort customers, and with over 11,000 deployments, Syncsort's products are used in more than 50 countries to back up and protect data in distributed environments, speed data warehouse processing, and improve performance of data-intensive applications and processes. For more information call +1-201-930-9700 (+1-877-FAST-951 in the US and Canada) or visit www.syncsort.com.

All product and company names are registered trade marks of their owners.

Kevin King of Horn Group for Syncsort Incorporated, +1-646-202-9781, kking@horngroup.com; Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000922/SYNCSORTLOGO