Catalogic Software,
the leading provider of software-defined copy data management (CDM),
today announced the release of ECX 2.4, the newest version of its
award-winning software platform. This release delivers significant
capabilities by adding Oracle and SQL application aware integration,
support for EMC Unity storage, native support for Amazon Web Services
(AWS) and deepening integration with popular DevOps tools. ECX 2.4
includes several other significant features that expand the capabilities
of the platform for new and existing customers.
As the market's only independent "In-Place" CDM solution, ECX is
designed to leverage the snapshot and replication technologies of the
existing storage and virtual infrastructure in a customer environment.
This in-place CDM approach has significant advantages over alternatives
in that it requires no additional infrastructure for the customer to
purchase and manage, and leverages the existing production environment
rather than requiring the creation of new copies of data. This
advantage is especially powerful in database environments where the
databases need to remain online and accessible continuously, and there
the data volumes make the creation of extra copies untenable.
"Today's release of ECX 2.4 delivers deep integration for both Oracle
and SQL, allowing our customers to leverage their existing
infrastructure to further expand their ability to eliminate copy sprawl,
while dramatically improving their capabilities to deliver fresh copies
of key databases to those functions and business units that demand
them", commented Ed Walsh, CEO of Catalogic. "At the same time, we are
delivering huge advancements in ECX's capabilities for both Hybrid Cloud
and DevOps-two key modernization initiatives that our customers are
pursuing."
With its application aware integration with Oracle and SQL database
management systems, ECX delivers the most robust and cost effective CDM
solution for mission critical database environments, solving the
database sprawl problem that most customers wrestle with today. Today,
it is common for an enterprise to have more than 200 database instances
and have more than 10 copies of each database, creating an unmanageable
amount of copy data that wastes capital and operational costs. Managing
the copy environment slows down IT efforts across multiple fronts: test
and development, reporting and analytics, DevOps and more. The enhanced
database features in ECX 2.4 -- including data masking, integrated pre-
and post-scripting and log management -- eliminate the copy sprawl
problem and dramatically simplify managing, tracking and accessing
database copies.
"Catalogic has been making great headway in the management of copy
data, and their move into deeper database integration is a logical and
significant progression," said David Floyer, CTO & Co-founder of
Wikibon. "By simplifying the complex steps involved in providing
actionable, up-to-date database copies to multiple data consumers in an
organization, Catalogic enables IT to provide much faster and controlled
time-to-data-copy, significantly increases the Data Value of databases,
and take a long step towards full digitization of the organization."
The addition of integrated AWS S3 storage support enables ECX copy
policies to now be directed to AWS S3 destinations, giving ECX customers
the option to extend the management and use of data to the public cloud
while maintaining full control and orchestration through the
centralized CDM platform. This is one of several hybrid cloud use cases
where ECX allows customers to extend the creation and management of
copy data to the cloud without changing existing processes and
methodologies.
Catalogic continues to offer IT organizations innovative ways to
enable rapid DevOps development methodologies. Adding to the already
available ECX ability to drive "infrastructure as code" using enterprise
storage arrays, today's release includes a plug-in for popular DevOps
tool Puppet, allowing Puppet users to directly manage and deploy live
operating environments that include the use of a copy of the relevant
application data, entirely through the Puppet console using native
Puppet commands. The Puppet plug-in is one of a series of new add-ons
via the Catalogic ECX Marketplace, a new on-line store for sharing and
downloading new capabilities. Pre-built, downloadable scripts and
plug-ins allow easy integration of the ECX RESTful API with Chef,
Puppet, IBM UrbanCode DevOps tools among others. In addition, Catalogic
ECX is now available as a development tool on the IBM Bluemix Garage,
giving developers an easy means to access system-of-record
infrastructure without affecting production environments. https://www.ibm.com/devops/method/content/code/tool_catalogicecx/
"DevOps is hard. Don't let anyone tell you different. It requires
buy in from all relevant individuals, the willingness to change
departmental and even corporate culture, and above all the right tools,"
commented Trevor Pott, founder of eGeek Consulting. "Catalogic's
self-service portal and API access give developers the ability to manage
and provision their IT environments. At the same time operations can
set limits using profiles and role based administration. This latest
release delivers a bundle of valuable capabilities, further
demonstrating Catalogic's commitment to enabling DevOps for a broad set
of IT customers. Catalogic makes taking that first, critical step
towards more modern IT practices easier and more palatable for all
involved."
With this release, Catalogic ECX is the first copy data management
solution to support the EMC Unity product line ECX 2.4 also adds support
for the EMC Unity Family of storage arrays, including Unity 300, 400,
500, 600 (All-Flash and Hybrid Flash) and EMC Unity VSA.
ECX 2.4 Summary of New Key Features:
- Oracle and SQL integration
- Support for EMC Unity storage
- Native support for AWS S3 Storage
- IBM Bluemix Integration
- Integration of customer pre- and post-copy scripting
- Multitenancy and scalability
- Integrated Developers Marketplace
- Plug-In for Puppet