Incipient, Inc., a leading provider of network-based storage virtualization software for Storage Area Network (SAN) environments, today announced that Network World named its flagship product, Incipient Network Storage Platform™ (iNSP™) software suite, one of the “10 Best Products for Next-Generation Network Infrastructure.” Network World editors and advisors selected the top ten products deemed to offer the most innovative solutions to simplify today’s “New Data Center.” In Network World’s estimation, the “New Data Center is your next-generation infrastructure. It is automated and virtualized. It is flexible and modular and it knows no perimeters.” To read more of Network World’s “Best of the New Data Center” series, visit: http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2007/ndc1/021907-ndc-best-of-products.html?page=3.
“Eventually all data layer functions such as storage, databases, and file systems will sit below a unified virtualization layer, which is critical to making the promise of IT as a service oriented infrastructure real. Incipient is certainly playing a key role in this vision with the release of iNSP for enterprises,” said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “iNSP automates and delivers storage services consistently across the SAN – making time consuming and error prone tasks such as data migration and storage provisioning, simple and strategic. It is only a matter of time until service oriented architectures within IT are commonplace.”
“We consider it a tremendous honor that our storage virtualization software was selected as one of the ten best products by Network World. This is especially rewarding when you consider the storage virtualization market segment is dominated by top tier storage vendors. We consider the Network World top ten list to be a strong endorsement for our product,” said Robert Infantino, senior vice president marketing and alliances, Incipient, Inc. “Now, more than ever, technology innovations developed for SAN environments must immediately provide real business value in terms of reducing the total cost of ownership and providing near-term return on investment. Our vision of adding more intelligence in the network, enabled by our iNSP virtualization software, is now becoming a reality.”
About iNSP
Introduced in September of 2006, Incipient’s software suite is the industry’s first fully embedded switch-resident storage virtualization solution with enterprise-class scalability. For the first time, storage administrators can build SAN storage tiers with zero planned downtime. iNSP software abstracts the SAN data path, eliminating application downtime normally associated with data migrations and device reconfigurations. iNSP also simplifies SAN management with a universal management interface, a policy-based automated provisioning engine, and support of heterogeneous storage arrays.
iNSP supports the Cisco MDS 9000 Series of FC director switches with the 32-Port Storage Services Module (SSM). Incipient has certified iNSP’s interoperability with arrays from leading storage vendors to include EMC, HDS, HP and IBM. iNSP is now available through Incipient and its business partners.
Some of the key benefits of iNSP include:
- Zero Planned Downtime for Application Data Growth
Many large enterprises are challenged with rapid application data growth resulting in storage arrays quickly filling to near capacity. To accommodate this growth, iNSP’s data migration feature set can be used to free up space and keep application data localized without disruption to hosts or applications. This capability avoids the need to spread application data across multiple storage arrays and eliminates the need for planned downtime. - Zero Planned Downtime Associated with Storage Array Decommissioning
Legacy SAN storage arrays are a significant cost to enterprise customers. These costs can include data center floor space, utilities such as power and cooling, and high product maintenance fees on earlier lower performing storage arrays. iNSP’s non-disruptive data migration feature allows storage administrators to decommission or repurpose storage arrays without impact to host applications. - Simplified SAN Management
iNSP’s common management system for heterogeneous SAN environments, combined with its policy-based automated provisioning engine, simplifies the storage provisioning process. It allows administrators to automate common provisioning and migration tasks, leveraging its capabilities for “deep” device discovery, storage device pools and best-practice provisioning templates.
About Incipient, Inc.
Incipient, Inc. is a leading provider of patented, network-resident storage virtualization and data migration software that delivers zero planned downtime and simplified management for enterprise SAN environments. Incipient is a privately held software company with corporate headquarters in Waltham, MA. For more information, please visit http://www.incipient.com
