Marathon Adds Data Protection to Windows Portfolio

Marathon Technology, which creates high-availability environments for Microsoft applications, is adding disaster recovery and data protection software to its EverRun product portfolio, the Littleton, Mass., company announced Dec. 3.

EverRun CDP (continuous data protection) software will work with standard server, networking and storage environments, and Marathon will offer specific options for a range of Microsoft products, including Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint Services and Windows Server, said Michael Bilancieri, director of products.

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While primarily working with Microsoft, Marathon expanded its portfolio earlier this year to include high-availability software for XenSource's enterprise platform. The company has also planned to offer its software for Linux, but Bilancieri said Marathon will begin offering support for Linux later in 2008.

While important to enterprise companies, disaster recovery is one area that seems to be overlooked by a large majority of IT professionals. In May, a study conducted by Brilliant Ideas for Scalent Systems reported that 89 percent of IT administrators test their disaster recovery systems only once a year.

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The EverRun CDP software looks to improve disaster recovery by making a product that integrates with the Windows environment and allows users to set policies for what data needs protection.

In general, Marathon's software allows an IT manager to tie together two x86 servers, creating a virtualized Windows server environment at the point where the applications are deployed. By adding disaster recovery software, Bilancieri said Marathon is offering its customers a better way to deal with both planned and unplanned downtime. It will also help to ease the management of an environment when it comes to pushing out patches or routine maintenance.

The software is disk based and is not meant to displace a tape-backup archive of a company's data, Bilancieri said. The disaster recovery software is a WAN-based product that allows users to recover and protect data even if the data has been deleted or corrupted. The software also allows users to recover data from remote locations.

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