If data is the lifeblood of an organization, the applications are its heart. Cost control and risk mitigation in data centers typically are adversarial pursuits. Ensuring application uptime and performance within those constraints is the data center manager’s primary objective. Most data storage systems, however, are oblivious to the applications they are serving. Today, Pillar Data Systems significantly alters that landscape.

All applications are not created equal. All data is not created equal. As storage administrators look to control costs in their data centers, the ability to match their storage resources with the value of data at the application level promises that their overall IT environment is optimized, from the application to the underlying infrastructure.

“Pillar saw a need and recognized that a company’s storage environment shouldn’t just house data, but should support the unique needs of every application,” said David Riley, CIO, Foundry Networks. “With the highest utilization rates in the industry, Pillar Axiom allows us to dynamically optimize our storage environment to the associated applications that run our business. Since Pillar offers optimal performance to our applications, we also don’t have to worry about trading out performance for additional storage.”

Pillar Data Systems is the only storage company to deliver true Application-Aware Storage services. The Pillar Axiom allows an administrator to define the application type and its associated values, and the system automatically tunes itself to deliver differentiated storage service levels based on application priority. What truly differentiates the Pillar Axiom is its ability to manage multiple and varying types of applications on a single platform, maintaining the unique values and characteristics of each. The resulting benefits include a 50 percent reduction in administrative expenses and total cost of ownership, as well as industry-leading disk utilization of up to 80 percent.

“We view today’s announcement as a game-changing event in the data storage industry,” said Mike Workman, CEO and chairman, Pillar Data Systems. “Just as Pillar led the industry in bringing forth new technologies and driving greater data center efficiencies, we’re pioneering the integration between application and storage by bringing to market truly Application-Aware Storage.”

The Pillar Axiom Application-Aware Storage system enables users to optimize their application environments by:

Dynamically reassign resources temporarily or permanently. The proliferation of applications and the constantly changing needs of the business require a storage infrastructure that can adapt to those changing needs. The Pillar Axiom is the only storage system on the market today with the flexibility to meet those dynamic requirements.

Provision storage like you provision servers. By provisioning Application-Aware Storage as seamlessly as users provision virtual servers, management and maintenance becomes a simpler task – and infrastructure optimization becomes automatic. With Pillar, storage administrators are able to provision a LUN in six clicks, eliminating the operational inefficiencies associated with today’s legacy infrastructures.

Slash administration time. Simplified management combined with a system that can be tuned to specific service level needs of multiple applications greatly reduces administrative time.

Comm-Works, a leading North American provider of technology and infrastructure services and solutions for large corporations and government agencies found the benefits of utilizing Pillar’s application-aware storage system.

“Pillar has cracked the code for today’s storage needs. My applications need more than just a LUN, they need an array that is capable of differentiating services based upon real-time performance demands,” said Greg Thayer, Director of Information Technology, Comms-Works. “The idea of provisioning my storage like I provision my virtualized servers, by resources, is just so intuitive and I am surprised that no one has thought of it until now.”

Pillar Data Systems will extend, over the next 90 days, its Application-Aware Storage platform with several enhanced features and specific configurations to address the needs of database, virtualization, messaging and data protection applications.

“It's hard to argue with a strategy that says marrying the specific requirements of an application to a finely tuned infrastructure is anything but good,” said Steve Duplessie, senior analyst and founder, Enterprise Strategy Group. “This is the next frontier of storage intelligence.”

Click here to download an ESG paper on Pillar’s Application-Aware Storage: http://www.pillardata.com/company/application-aware-storage/