Features - Financial Plays Of The Week:

PolyServe, MICROSOFT TO DELIVER SOLUTIONS FOR DATA CENTER

PolyServe Inc, which launched a shared data clustering solution for the Microsoft Windows platform, has joined with Microsoft Corp in a strategic alliance aimed at delivering fault-tolerant, modular computing to the enterprise data center. Modular computing allows customers to pay as they grow by adding compute, storage or network capacity and performance to applications on an as-needed basis with no disruption of service.

The broad-based alliance between the two companies combines elements of technology licensing, joint support and problem resolution for mutual customers, and close marketing and development collaborations with key product groups, such as those for Microsoft SQL Server and Windows Server. As a result of the collaboration, PolyServe has developed specifically engineered and validated solutions for key Microsoft products: SQL Server, Microsoft Internet Information Server and Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 file and print services.

"Microsoft welcomes PolyServe as an ally in our multifaceted effort to increase the operational efficiency of our customers' IT infrastructures," said Mark Young, general manager of ISVs, Developer and Platform Evangelism at Microsoft Corp. "This alliance with PolyServe will allow us to create solutions on the Microsoft platform that enable our common customers to lay out more flexible and strategic IT strategies, and expand their IT portfolios in response to business growth and industry demands."

Don Petersen, senior product manager for SQL Server at Microsoft Corp, added, "PolyServe is focusing on scalable, highly available solutions for SQL Server and on making valuable business data easy and inexpensive to manage in the enterprise. PolyServe's ability to increase flexibility and reduce complexity in the Windows data center is helping customers simplify database administration and achieve exceptionally agile server and storage deployments."

"We are completely aligned with Microsoft's focus on the issues that matter most to IT customers today: reducing the risk, cost and effort required to manage and maintain their server and storage environment," said Mike Stankey, president and CEO of PolyServe. "Joining with Microsoft represents a tremendous opportunity to make a large, measurable difference in our customers' efforts to realize a bigger return on their IT investments."

A Far-Reaching Strategic Alliance

Among the elements of the alliance, PolyServe has become a Microsoft Certified Partner. In achieving Microsoft Certified Partner status, PolyServe successfully completed compatibility testing of its Matrix Server shared data clustering software with the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server operating system.

PolyServe has also fostered a close engineering relationship with Microsoft product teams and licensed several programming interfaces in order to design and develop PolyServe Matrix Server for Windows. Specifically, PolyServe has licensed both the Microsoft Installable File System (IFS) Kit and Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) driver development kit to ensure the Matrix Server cluster file system (CFS) is fully supported and compatible with existing Windows applications.

Microsoft and PolyServe have also entered into a Microsoft Premier Support Services Agreement under which Microsoft personnel will provide technical support services to mutual customers deploying PolyServe Matrix Server software. The services agreement stipulates that Microsoft personnel are trained to take first-call support on PolyServe Matrix Server and identify issues. It also provides a mechanism for joint problem resolution between the two companies. As a result, customers can feel confident they will receive the highest level of support, cooperation and interoperability among PolyServe Matrix Server, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft applications, such as Office and SQL Server.

In addition, the two companies will cooperate in the promotion of Matrix Server software as part of a complete Windows-based solution for server and storage consolidation, migration from UNIX servers and other undertakings aimed at building a manageable, fault-tolerant and scalable data center.