Copan Solves 'Persistent' Storage Problem
Company:
Headquarters: Longmont, Colo.
Technology Sector: Storage
Key Product: Enterprise MAID Revolution 300
Year Founded: 2002
Number of Channel Partners: Approaching 100 worldwide
Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution providers
Why You Should Care: Copan's Enterprise MAID platform makes long-term data more secure, reliable and accessible than traditional solutions.
The Lowdown: Storage of infrequently used data can become a "persistent" problem for enterprises. Known as persistent data, this information typically is infrequently changed or modified, yet still needs to be retained for future reference or access. Often, this type of data finds its way to tape-based storage, but Copan Systems offers an alternative.
Its Enterprise MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) platform provides a way for companies to keep persistent data online at a fraction of the operating costs of transactional storage but with more reliability and performance than offline media.
Its patented Canister Technology supports 14 drives per canister, mounted in a way to eliminate "rotational vibration." With these canisters,
896 TB of data can be stored in only 10 square feet, freeing up data center floor space and reducing cooling costs. In addition, at least 75 percent of the drives are powered off at any given moment. This makes Copan's MAID-based products a good fit for green solutions.
"When helping their clients plan for storage growth, value-added resellers must consider the environmental impact of any equipment to be installed. Traditional storage technologies do not address this problem," said Mark Ward, president and CEO of Copan. "To help their clients avert an energy crisis in their data centers, solution providers must identify the large portion of storage that is persistent data and move it to smarter, more energy-efficient storage technologies."
Copan's customer base spans all facets of business, including vertical markets such as education, finance, health care and media. Because of legal and regulatory responsibilities, government agencies also make up a large portion of its users.
"After reviewing several options, we selected Copan's data archiving because the solution is already proven at over 20 federal agencies, where it is reducing power consumption and cooling costs, as well as reining in data center real estate expenditures," said Humberto Irizarry, vice president of Innovative Technologies, a Chantilly, Va.-based solution provider, in a statement.
With benefits that include 90-day extendable deal registration, excellent margins and free training, Copan's Channel Partner Program is designed to help resellers keep their customers ahead of evolving technologies and storage issues.