DataCore Software Corporation, the leading provider of hardware independent, storage virtualization software solutions, recently announced that Lawyer Links, LLC has selected, deployed and is utilizing its SANmelody software for the company’s storage area network (SAN). Lawyer Links is an application service provider that offers subscription-based services to attorneys of law firms as well as to in-house corporate counsels. The company’s topic-oriented service the Advantage enables practitioners to quickly find answers on point, study unfamiliar topics, and keep up-to-date on the newest developments – all from one unified source.
“When we first looked at SANmelody we found it a very intriguing solution, however, we were very cautious of SANmelody due to its low cost,” said Marty Zigman, chief technology advisor, Lawyer Links, LLC. “After seeing demonstrations of the product, however, we realized it was just a great deal – a lot of value for the money. The question of reliability was answered by both seeing the product in action and – in particular – by hearing from references and other notable customers that are running larger, high-end storage area network deployments with DataCore.”
According to Zigman, a primary concern at Lawyer Links was to keep its costs down when embracing a SAN. After being exposed to DataCore, Lawyer Links knew that it wanted to try SANmelody as a low-cost way to build a SAN. “Lawyer Links had already invested in the VMware virtualization philosophy and approach in its data center,” said Carlos Carreras, vice president of sales and business development, DataCore Software. “In doing so, it gets more difficult and costly to provision storage to new systems since lots of disk space gets wasted and consumed due to moving whole operating systems around, and so forth. Lawyer Links knew it had to do a better job of managing storage resources and therefore needed to centralize and share their storage. And to take advantage of VMware’s more high-end capabilities, such as redundancy, failover and load-balancing, the company knew it needed to deploy a SAN.”
Zigman has now deployed DataCore SANmelody SANs in two different areas of the company. Lawyer Links’ Advantage is currently live, running SANmelody as its production SAN. Zigman also has deployed a low-cost, back-up SAN using an entry-level version of SANmelody that runs shares storage over existing Ethernet network connections. “The fact that you can download a trial of SANmelody or purchase it without spending thousands of dollars is very important,” noted Zigman. “That allows people to take the first step and really experience the technology for themselves. The cost is so low to try it out that it is very compelling and once it gets deployed, it is very easy to assess the benefits and grow from there depending on the needs of your IT users.”
DataCore Software actually offers several ways for prospective users to try its SAN technology at a very low cost before jumping in to a full version of SANmelody or higher-end SANsymphony. For example, DataCore’s Virtual Infrastructure Foundation, an entry level version of SANmelody which includes thin provisioning software can be easily downloaded for a free 30 day trial from the DataCore website.
DataCore Software reseller partner AccessFlow was responsible for Lawyer Links selecting and implementing SANmelody. “AccessFlow was important to us in this process,” explained Zigman. “While we had worked with VMware, we had limited experience deploying a SAN and we were not prepared to go to a traditional high cost solution. We took comfort in the prospect of utilizing iSCSI and DataCore because the solution was compelling. AccessFlow helped us design a solution and we were persuaded to go with SANmelody because of the cost savings and AccessFlow’s confidence in DataCore. We worked with AccessFlow to do the initial SANmelody solution, which we have now purchased and rely on.”
Lawyer Links’ mission is to improve the way leading decision makers access essential information about corporate compliance, finance and filings. The company will soon be serving the banking sector by offering research services around organizing content for financial advisory concerns.