Pillar Data Systems, the leading provider of Application-Aware storage systems, has announced the launch of the Pillar Axiom 500-MC™ (Mission Critical), a storage system designed to break the paradigm of so called 'Tier 1' storage systems

The Axiom 500-MC delivers the performance, functionality, and availability of legacy 'Tier 1' storage systems, but does so in a modular, cost-effective, and simplified manner.

Companies around the world that have already deployed the Pillar Axiom 500-MC to support their mission critical applications have enjoyed the following benefits:

• 99.999 per cent uptime for mission critical applications;
• System-wide, non-disruptive data protection;
• True continuous replication of critical data to a single or dual disaster recovery site(s);
• and Centralised management and control.

The Axiom 500-MC is designed to drastically simplify the installation, provisioning and management of storage for mission critical applications. Most competing storage vendors measure availability across a number of storage footprints, creating costly and complex management scenarios to meet availability objectives.

With the Axiom 500-MC, Pillar goes so far as to guarantee 99.999 per cent availability within a single system, which can scale both performance and capacity according to application requirements.

The Axiom 500-MC includes Pillar Professional Services, which provide onsite LUN creation, provisioning, and configuration management to make system administration simple and bulletproof. When combined with Pillar's High Availability Design and Implementation Professional Services, customers are provided with an extremely simplified solution that provides the highest levels of application availability, exceptional performance, and a low total cost of ownership.

"With the Axiom 500-MC,,Pillar is dismantling the status quo once again. No longer does 'Tier 1' equate to expensive, complex, monolithic storage" said Bob Maness, vice president of worldwide marketing, Pillar Data Systems. "We recognise many companies require their storage systems to provide the absolute highest levels of application availability and performance".

"However cost, complexity and lack of software redundancy very often prevent them from deploying traditional storage arrays". "The Axiom 500-MC alters that supposed rule. We're bringing all of the functionality, performance, availability, and the professional services of mission critical storage at mid-range storage prices."

"Pillar loves to break new ground and is demonstrating that again with the Axiom 500-MC. It deftly marries new-era and affordable data storage requirements with the 'bullet-proof'/mission-critical demands of today's best Tier 1 data centres," said Mark Peters, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Pillar is combining the best from two data-storage 'worlds'. It's enabling customers to deploy a solution with the highest levels of application availability, without the cost and complexity of traditional, monolithic high-end storage systems."

Notes to Editors

About Pillar Data Systems
Founded in 2001, Pillar Data Systems develops Application-Aware Storage systems for midsize and enterprise organisations. With the highest utilisation rates in the storage industry, the Pillar Axiom solution is the most efficient storage system on the market today. The Pillar Axiom cuts administrative time and total cost of ownership by more than 50 percent as well as provides the only storage system that can differentiate services based on application priority. Designed from the ground up as the only true Application-Aware Storage system, the Pillar Axiom allows users to match multiple application characteristics to the appropriate service levels within a single storage platform.

Pillar Data Systems is privately funded by Tako Ventures, LLC, the venture arm of Larry Ellison. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California with a development office in Longmont, Colorado. The EMEA headquarters is in Drogheda near Dublin, with initial operations across Ireland, UK, Germany and France.