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Tag: smbs

  • Gladinet Launches Cloud Gateway for Cloud-Hosted Desktop

    After pioneering the concept of integrating a wide range of cloud services on a PC desktop with its introduction of Cloud Desktop earlier this year, Gladinet, the ubiquitous cloud storage client, rolled out Gladinet Cloud Gateway v1.0 and Cloud Desktop v1.3.

    The company says both new products are designed to meet the cloud computing needs of small and medium-sized businesses – a category that until now was underserved by cloud service providers.

    If Cloud Desktop turns the Internet into a virtual PC, Cloud Gateway is its file server. Built on the same open platform as Cloud Desktop, teh Gateway connects individual desktops to cloud storage through one access point.

    "Cloud Gateway acts as a liaison between Cloud Desktop and cloud storage," explained Gladinet co-founder Jerry Huang.

    "Before, if a company had 100 employees using Cloud Desktop, they needed 100 connections to Amazon S3, Google Docs or whatever services their employees were using. With the Gateway, that’s all changed. Now SMBs only need Cloud Gateway to connect to cloud services, regardless of how many different interfaces or accounts they may have. The Gateway acts as a file server to the Desktops, which simply connect to it over their LAN."

    According to Huang, allowing one server to support many individual desktops, the application gives SMBs the freedom to scale back their own data storage capacity while providing centralized administration and backup capability.

    “Files stored at various offsite data centers are as easy to access as if they resided on the user’s hard drive. Thanks to Cloud Gateway’s use of smart caching, copies of files stored with cloud services are quickly accessible on local desktops – eliminating the problem of lost data in the event of cloud service business closures,” he said.

    Gladinet assures that once configured by an administrator, Cloud Gateway is available to every Cloud Desktop user in a company and requires no account information to be entered by individual users, no matter how many different cloud services they’re using.

  • Nexsan Launches iSCSI SAN Aimed at Standalone or Virtualised IT Environments


    Nexsan has introduced its first iSCSI SAN, which has been specifically designed and priced to give SMBs and SMEs a new value-alternative in implementing the protocol.

    The Nexsan iSeries is intended as a complete, easy-to-implement, enterprise-class SAN that is ideal for use in standalone or fully virtualised IT environments.

    It is available in two configurations which include additional storage expansion to meet customers growing data storage requirements.

    Bob Woolery, Nexsan’s senior vice president of marketing, said the iSeries gives customers flexibility and value.

    "We’ve designed the iSeries to give customers a solution with all the storage services, data protection and scalability they need at a price they can afford," he said.

    "And, we’re giving our channel partners a new value alternative in this growing market segment. We’ve truly changed the game with value."

    The iSeries offers iSCSI, Fibre Channel and NAS configurations from the same system and provides up to 1PB of storage.

    It also includes a complete suite of easy-to-use enterprise storage services, including virtualisation.

    Woolery said the iSeries was being sold for a single up-front price to affordably accommodate a company’s increasing storage needs.

    "This holistic approach simplifies pricing, removes hidden costs and licensing fees associated with competitive products and smoothly accommodates an organisation’s IT requirements as they change," he said.

    Other benefits offered by the Nexsan iSeries include:

    • Virtualised storage for flexibility and intelligent automation of routine tasks
    • High performance for running multiple demanding applications from a single high-density system
    • Simultaneous use of SAS and/or SATA disk drives in the same storage chassis for application flexibility and low-cost scalability
    • VMware-certified, ensuring high performance in both physical and virtual environments
    • Easy to deploy and manage with wizard-based setup, administration and central management of volumes, snapshots, HA/data replication, mirroring and data migration
    • High-performance with up to four RAID engines per storage system
    • Nexsan’s AutoMAID™ energy-saving technology reduces energy costs by up to 60% without compromising application performance
    • Key application support: storage pooling, virtual servers, archiving
    • High-speed, highly responsive – hyper transport bus, real-time OS, enterprise-class network chip set
    • Fully redundant and designed for 99.999% availability
    • Available immediately through Nexsan’s global network of authorized value-added resellers.

  • Digium Adds New US Features To Latest Version of Switchvox IP PBX


    Digium has introduced a new version of Switchvox SMB, its IP PBX designed for small- to mid-sized businesses (SMBs). 

    Switchvox’s web-aware capabilities allow its integration with web and back-office applications, effectively turning the phone system into a unified communications (UC) platform. 

    Switchvox SMB 4.0 adds various UC capabilities, including support for fax, chat and video calling, which the company says improve users’ productivity and efficiency. 

    Josh Stephens, general manager of Digium’s San Diego operations and a co-creator of Switchvox, said the IP PBX has always leveraged web technologies more than other competing products. 

    He said they had integrated Switchvox with Google maps and web-based CRM software such as Salesforce and SugarCRM. 

    "We’ve also provided easy-to-use APIs that enable businesses to quickly tie together their back-office software that they rely on day to day with their Switchvox IP PBX," he said. 

    "Now, support for instant messaging, fax and video calling, plus additional IVR functionality and a range of new benefits for administrators and users alike make Switchvox SMB 4.0 a truly web-aware UC solution." 

    To add to the appeal of the latest version of Switchvox SMB 4.0, it is available free of charge to customers with a current Switchvox SMB software subscription. 

    For new customers, Switchvox SMB USD $3,390 for a 10 user system, including hardware, software, a one-year subscription and warranty. 

    The entire line of Switchvox SMB appliances, the largest of which scales to serve 400 users, will be available from Digium and partners world-wide beginning on 3 March, 2009. 

    Danny Windham, CEO of Digium, said Switchvox is the first time that advanced unified communications features have been made available to SMBs that might not have big-company budgets. 

    He said these organisations are as reliant as anyone on their phones, e-mail, fax, chat and video and on the web to improve employee communications and efficiency. 

    "With Switchvox SMB 4.0, Digium brings all of these elements together and significantly integrates the business phone system with web applications in a way that we believe is unique today."