NEC Corporation of America (NEC), a leading provider and integrator of advanced IT, communications, managed services and biometric solutions, announced a new addition to its award winning HYDRAstor storage platform, a Virtual Appliance designed to allow for extremely rapid provisioning of backup storage into virtualized environments and provide off-site backup capabilities ideal for small sites and branches. HYDRAstor, part of NEC's Smart Enterprise solutions designed to improve the way people work and communicate, was selected as Silver Product of the Year winner in last year's Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com Backup Hardware category.

Virtualization simplifies IT system platform by consolidating servers and storage systems and separates software lifecycle from hardware lifecycle which frees IT managers from complex compatibility work. Adding virtual appliances of backup storage into the picture helps organizations by eliminating separate hardware management and providing business agility.

The NEC HYDRAstor VA can be easily deployed into virtual environment and adds deduplication storage capability and WAN-optimized replication feature for off-site backup. Key benefits include:

• Universal Dedupe Storage for Small Environment (1TB up to 16TB)
• Easy Deployment Anywhere in Virtual Environment (VMware, Hyper-V)
• DR Solution for Small Sites/Branches with WAN-optimized Replication
• Perfectly fits in Cloud Service Platform

"Market dynamics and ever increasing demands of today's data centric industries are finding their way to organizations of all types and size and our virtual appliance solution meets these needs with a simple price structure while delivering an enterprise class feature set and performance," said Hide Senta, VP of strategic business, NEC Corporation of America.