Sun and Independent Software Vendor Partners Provide Integrated Solution to Meet Customers’ Electronic Document, Records Management and Retention Needs
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW) today announced the general availability of the Sun StorEdge 5310 Compliance Archiving System. The system, a combination of the Sun StorEdge 5310 NAS Appliance and Sun StorEdge Compliance Archiving Software offers an affordable and price competitive alternative for customers’ requirements for growing and complex records retention. Integrated with Sun’s industry leading(1) Identity Management solutions, to administer and report on access controls, and major ISV applications; the Sun StorEdge Compliance Archiving System provides a fully integrated solution to help facilitate compliance with the myriad of both government and business roles regulations — including HIPAA for healthcare, SEC Rule 17a-4 and Basel 2 for financial services, 21 CFR 11 for life sciences, as well the Sarbanes Oxley Act and its global equivalents.
The Sun StorEdge Compliance Archiving System enforces electronic record-retention policies at the storage level. Write-once read-many (WORM) files are non-rewritable and non-erasable. Robust security features–such as audit logs, user authentication, secure clock and access controls–combine to help safeguard the integrity of vital digital information. The system is fully redundant and, can be configured with clustering to ensure no single point of failure. It supports snapshot copies, remote data mirroring and a choice of either Fibre Channel or SATA disk that scales to 179TB. The system is flexible to allow customers to configure how much of the disk is WORM protected; providing room to grow into compliance as needs expand. For layered storage, customers can opt for WORM tape backup/archive as well. The Sun StorEdge Compliance Archiving System has been evaluated to meet the Securities and Exchange Committee’s 240.17a-4 regulation for electronic storage media.
Bruce Overoye, director of IT, Santa Clara County Tax Collector’s Office, said: “We process over 850,000 payments, of property taxes annually, totaling $3 billion. All these transactions are imaged and each one has retention requirements of five, seven, 12 and 30 years, depending on the type of property tax. It is becoming increasingly critical that we drive security and data protection down to the data storage layer. Because of this we are piloting the Sun StorEdge 5310 Compliance Archiving System with our Vignette Imaging and Document Management system, as a way of protecting the integrity of the content we store and enforcing the retention policies we have in place at the County.”
“We see regulatory compliance and data security as key drivers for NAS growth,” said Pushan Rinnen, principal analyst at Gartner. “Although there are many NAS products in the market today, enterprises have limited file archiving options that are powerful and cost-effective enough for HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley.”
Sun continues to promote customer choice and flexibility by providing interoperability between the Sun StorEdge 5310 Compliance Archiving System and applications for e-mail, document, and corporate records management from some of the industry’s leading Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). To date, over 50 data management and content applications – including imaging, messaging, technical computing, oil and gas exploration, and data protection — have been qualified to securely and reliably store data on the system. In addition, a variety of the industry’s best Enterprise Content Management application providers, including AXS-One, iLumin, Mobius Management Systems and Vignette, have qualified their applications with the system’s compliance features to enforce retention and leverage the system’s write-once, read-many (WORM) capability.
“Sun is making great strides to build and deliver integrated compliance offerings that raise the bar for Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), helping customers navigate and overcome the complex maze of regulatory records management and retention requirements set both by the government and their own internal guidelines,” said Mark Canepa, executive vice president of Network Storage at Sun. “Sun’s storage portfolio, industry leading identity management solutions, Solaris(TM) 10 data-management functionality and the support of the ISV community, enable Sun to deliver end-to-end, scalable document and records management systems, that a point-product simply cannot match.”
Sun’s portfolio for enabling customers to store corporate documents and records includes the Compliance and Content Management Solution, the Content Infrastructure System for general data archiving on tiered storage, and the 5310 Compliance Archiving System. Sun focuses on risk management and security as an integral part of its products and services, from the desktop application to the back-end archive. This offers customers the capability of archiving regulated data in a flexible, scalable storage solution, and an alternative, end-to-end systems option to point-product solutions offered by storage-only companies.
The Sun StorEdge 5310 Compliance Archiving System is generally available worldwide through Sun and its iForce Storage Elite partners. Pricing begins at US $73,995 for a 2 TB Fibre Channel configuration, and $81,995 for a 6 TB SATA configuration. Prices include all software costs(2).
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
A singular vision — “The Network Is The Computer” — guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world’s most important markets. Sun’s philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.
Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Java, Sun StorEdge and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
(1) META Group’s METAspectrum report for Identity Management — User Provisioning: Market Overview; January 5th 2005
(2) U.S. list price. All prices quoted are in U.S. dollars.
