News | January 14, 2008

Pillar Data Systems Leads Storage Efficiency Initiative, Continues Unprecedented Growth, Innovation

From green to virtualization, the storage industry saw many new trends emerge and blossom in 2007. Pillar Data Systems, a leading provider of enterprise network storage systems, was at the forefront of these trends, while maintaining its leadership in innovation and service for its growing worldwide customer base.

In 2007, Pillar brought several new executives on board, including Bob Maness, vice president of marketing; David Zimmer, vice president of worldwide channel sales; and Curtis Wittich, vice president of worldwide sales; and promoted Nancy Holleran to president. With its new management team in place, the company is executing on its plan to deliver innovative storage solutions, while lowering total cost of ownership for its customers. Due to its strong customer commitment, 2007 was also the year Pillar was able to showcase its 200th client - Virgin Games. The company closed 2007 with more than 300 worldwide customers.

Additionally, Pillar achieved several significant milestones for 2007 including:

  • Significant revenue growth from the previous year;
  • An increase of its indirect channel business to nearly 70 percent of total revenues;
  • Continued investment in the award-winning Axiom platform, bringing new features/functionality to market;
  • First to market disk drive technologies as they became market available – 750GB, 1TB SATA disk drives, 300GB FC drive;
  • Geographic expansion into three new regions of Europe (Southern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe) and Asia/Pacific with a May Japan launch;
  • Introduced a new set of professional services offerings, the Pillar Pulse suite of services;
  • Industry leadership in overall disk utilization (both written data and allocated space), increasing the overall efficiency and value of a storage subsystem;
  • Continued leadership in the unified storage platform market;
  • Introduced a new CEO blog, providing insightful, candid perspectives on the storage industry.

Delivering on the Efficiency Promise

In addition to announcing the Efficiency Quotient earlier this year, which sets the industry benchmark for evaluating data storage efficiencies, 2007 also marked the second year of shipping the Pillar Axiom system. As part of many organizations' goals to achieve better efficiency levels, customers have chosen to deploy the Axiom to unite SAN and NAS and consolidate multiple tiers of storage on a single platform to enable the utmost in storage efficiency. The cost savings and efficiency gains of those who have deployed the Pillar Axiom are unrivaled by competitive systems, and many have touted its benefits, including 75 percent savings on energy costs.

"We have been working with Pillar for a couple of years now and not only has the company met our storage needs, but it continues to exceed them," said Vince Delperdang, IT manager, O'Donnell/Akins. "Since adding the Axiom system, we have been able to scale our system as we grow. The beauty of it is that we are able to store more information in less space, which allows us to keep our overall operational costs at a minimum. The Axiom is an efficient, flexible, reliable storage system that keeps our business operations up while it drives our environmental costs down."

"What separates Pillar from other vendors is its commitment to driving true efficiencies for its customers," said Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst, The Taneja Group. "During the past year, Pillar has made significant strides in raising utilization rates for its customers, as the Axiom storage system is one of the most efficient disk systems on the market today. By driving utilization rates so high without suffering performance losses, Pillar customers are deriving maximum value out of their storage investments."

As part of a year of many firsts for the company, Pillar was one of the first organizations to join the Green Grid, a consortium that drives the IT industry forward in delivering more efficient technologies to help lower energy and space costs and improve data center efficiencies. Additionally, as one of the first vendors to offer 1TB SATA drives, end users experienced even greater savings when deploying the Axiom with this drive space. Pillar Axiom users on average have seen industry-leading, 62-percent written disk utilization, and one third of those customers are utilizing more than 80 percent of their disk array resources.

Driving Virtualization Market

During the course of the year, Pillar has made significant strides in strengthening its relationships with Oracle and VMware. The most recent announcement was support for the Oracle VM server virtualization software. Together, Oracle VM and Pillar's virtualization of tiered storage provide a highly flexible, scalable, and efficient architecture for Oracle applications. The strength of the Pillar Axiom lies in its ability to separate and prioritize the performance requirements for Oracle Application Server or Oracle Database 11g running on each Oracle VM. Additionally, it allows the system to expand storage capacity or performance in line with the user's dynamic requirements.

This announcement was just the final in a series of many for 2007. As a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, Pillar already has published several Validated Configurations as part of the Oracle Unbreakable Linux program. In addition, the company will extend that support to include Oracle VM, which will enable end users to drive maximum storage efficiency in Oracle and non-Oracle environments.

Additionally, Pillar announced its inclusion in VMware's Technology Alliance Partner program. The Pillar Axiom storage platform is architected to help users consolidate their storage resources, while simplifying management to reduce the cost to acquire, administer, and maintain midrange storage systems. Aligned tightly with VMware's ability to maximize efficiency for the server environment, Pillar integrates with VMware Infrastructure 3 gives users increased Quality of Service (QoS) at the storage layer. This allows for improved storage resource allocation, a highly available architecture and enhanced interoperability with the current infrastructure, which ensures that customers can drive maximum storage efficiency in a variety of application environments

Industry Recognition – Across the Globe

For its innovative technology and unrivaled customer service, Pillar earned the following industry accolades:

  • Storage Products Guide - Pillar Data Systems was recognized as one of the publication's 2007 Storage "Hot Companies" winners. This prestigious honor comes to Pillar based upon a stern selection criterion of what the publication calls the 4Ps, namely Products, People, Performance, and Potential behind the company's growing success.
  • Storries Awards (U.K.) - Pillar Data Systems' Axiom product was named the winner for the Editor's Choice and Disk Product of the Year for these U.K.-based awards.
  • ServerWatch Storage Product of the Year - The Pillar Axiom system was named runner-up in the storage system category.
  • Best of VMworld - Pillar Data Systems Axiom was named a finalist at this year's show.

"Our company has always strived to help our customers get the most out of their storage system, while eliminating overall cost. We deliver on this promise every day, and 2007 proved how well we've executed on that plan," said Mike Workman, chairman and CEO of Pillar Data Systems. "Pillar had an extraordinary 2007. We are excited that our customers have seen the benefits of our Axiom system, and we can't wait to see what 2008 has in store for us all."

About Pillar Data Systems
Founded in 2001, Pillar Data Systems develops midrange and enterprise network storage systems. The company's Pillar Axiom solution, driven by its innovative policy-based management capabilities, integrates SAN and NAS into a centrally managed storage platform. Pillar Axiom systems consolidate multiple tiers of enterprise network storage into a single, easily managed system capable of scaling to hundreds of terabytes of capacity. Pillar Data Systems is privately funded by Tako Ventures, LLC, the venture arm of Larry Ellison. The company is headquartered at 2840 Junction Avenue, San Jose, California 95134. The company can be reached on the Web at www.pillardata.com, or by email at sales@pillardata.com.

SOURCE: Pillar Data Systems