Software helps optimize data center efficiency, reliability.November 14, 2007 -
By actively powering servers on and off as needed and pooling physical and virtual server resources, Cassatt Active Response provides quick and non-invasive means to help reduce server energy consumption. Solution also promotes application availability, security, and responsiveness to changing business needs. Single software suite, offered in 4 editions, combines Cassatt Active Power Management(TM) and utility computing technologies based on Cassatt Collage(TM).
(Archive News Story - Products mentioned in this Archive News Story may or may not be available from the manufacturer.)
Original Press release
Cassatt Corporation
1740 Technology Drive, 6th floor
San Jose, CA, 95110
USA
Cassatt Launches New Active Response Product Line to Help Companies 'Go Green' and Make Data Centers More Efficient, Reliable, and Responsive
Breakthrough Software Provides Sensible First Step to Solving the Data Center Power Crisis, with Immediate Savings on Electricity and Costs of as Much as 50 Percent
SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 5 -- Cassatt(R) Corporation, a leader in making data centers more efficient, today unveiled the new Cassatt Active Response product line to help customers "go green" in their data centers. As more and more companies plan long-term strategies to reduce the power usage and carbon footprints of their data centers, Cassatt Active Response provides a sensible first step that can be quickly and non-invasively deployed to reduce the energy consumption of servers by as much as 50 percent. By actively powering servers on and off as needed, and pooling physical and virtual server resources, the Cassatt Active Response product line not only greatly improves energy efficiency, it also increases application availability, security, and responsiveness to changing business needs.
Also announced today (see separate release "Cassatt Announces Support from Industry Leaders For Its New Active Response Product Line to Help Companies 'Go Green' in Their Data Centers"), the Cassatt Active Response product line has garnered support from a wide range of industry leaders, including BearingPoint, Citrix, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Tata Consultancy Services, and TELADATA.
The new Cassatt Active Response product line combines Cassatt's Active Power Management(TM) and utility computing technologies based on Cassatt Collage(TM) into a single software suite. Cassatt Active Response will have four editions, each providing progressively more capabilities. Customers can start with a stand-alone edition aimed exclusively at improving energy efficiency. They can then progressively expand their use of Cassatt by upgrading to additional editions or by applying additional policy-based controls to more servers across their organizations. The new product offering gives customer more choice in adopting and expanding the benefits of Cassatt to make their data centers more efficient, more green, and more responsive.
Immediate On-ramp to Improved Energy Efficiency
Cassatt Active Response, Standard Edition, is a new product exclusively focused on giving customers an immediate starting point for improving energy efficiency. Based upon early work with customers, Standard Edition is expected to deliver a return-on-investment (ROI) of nearly 300% over three years. As customers desire more energy savings, better utilization of server assets, and increased application availability, they can start with or upgrade to Cassatt Active Response, Premium Edition and Cassatt Active Response, Data Center Edition, which provide more extensive features and improved savings. In 2008, Cassatt will add a fourth edition to the product line, Cassatt Active Response, Enterprise Edition, enabling an enterprise to share and optimize its resources across multiple data centers in different geographies.
"Since its founding in 2003, Cassatt has been focused on providing breakthrough technology to revolutionize how data centers are run, and to drastically reduce their cost structures," said Bill Coleman, chairman and CEO of Cassatt Corp. "The new Cassatt Active Response product line gives customers a way to move toward a 'green' data center in incremental steps. Customers have been searching for ways to get started going green without having to make huge investments in new hardware and software, disrupting their current operations, or installing invasive technologies. Cassatt can help them today and provide compelling ROI at each step along the way."
Policy-Based Control: Better Use of Data Center Resources, Reduced Risk of Attack
Typically, servers that deliver applications run hot 24 by 7 and their failover systems remain always-on, costing millions of dollars to maintain in terms of real estate, hardware, duplicate software licenses and maintenance contracts, and cooling. Many servers, however, especially in development and test centers, scale-out production environments, failover, and disaster recovery sites, sit idle for long periods until they are needed. The better way to manage these servers is to actively control them with innovative technology that uses policy-based controls to safely turn servers off when idle or not needed and then back on when demand warrants.
Cassatt Active Response allows administrators to set policies to turn servers off and on, apply policies to pool all server resources, and invoke policies to prioritize the delivery of applications. The underlying technology in Cassatt Active Response that makes it safe to turn servers off and on is called Active Power Management. The technology employs a sophisticated policy engine that takes into account server priorities and needs, server interrelationships, application dependencies and relationships, and individual server power consumption in deciding when to power-down and power-up machines. It takes into account variables such as peak and off-peak power schedules, time-of-day, and emergencies such as "demand curtailment" mandates from power companies to reduce electrical consumption - for example, on hot summer weekdays. The technology determines which servers to power down, and for how long, and then safely handles application requirements before turning them off and back on as application demand warrants.
As servers are needed again, or as failover systems are needed to expand the pool of available resources to meet service level agreements for application delivery, the technology applies the same logic and priorities to power those servers back on as appropriate. In addition, by turning servers off during hours when they aren't being used, Cassatt helps reduce the risk of virus attacks or unauthorized access to servers during the exact times when they are most likely to be attacked.
Unique Difference of the Cassatt Active Response Product Line
What sets the Cassatt Active Response product line apart from any other approach is the way in which the underlying Active Power Management technology intelligently works with existing resources in the data center. The technology applies best-practice principles that are:
-- Policy-Based - Administrators can apply appropriate business and operational policies and priorities to determine when, where, and how to power down and power up servers, rather than leave then running 24 by 7 or relying on "hard-wired" power decisions. Polices can also prioritize the delivery of applications.
-- Application Aware - Knows when and how applications must be shut down and brought back up systematically, and is aware of application interdependencies shared across multiple servers.
-- Hardware and Software Independent - Runs on any platform, works with any virtual or physical server (including blade servers), requires no change to existing hardware or software configurations, and is compatible with existing power distribution equipment.
Making It Easier for Customers to Adopt and Expand the Benefits of Cassatt
The four editions of the Cassatt Active Response product line deliver increased energy savings, better utilization of server assets, and increased application availability, while making it easier for customers to adopt incrementally. The product line includes:
-- Cassatt Active Response, Standard Edition - For increased energy efficiency. Customers can start with a focused, easy-to-implement project around energy efficiency using Cassatt Active Response, Standard Edition, which delivers drastic reductions in power and cooling costs with a minimum of complexity at a price point that make adoption cost-effective and return-on-investment fast. Standard Edition provides big benefits in very cyclical compute environments, in reducing energy usage of disaster recovery equipment, and in data centers where power usage is at its maximum. With Cassatt Active Response, Standard Edition, customers can expect to save as much as 50 percent on their current power and cooling costs and achieve nearly 300% ROI over three years. Customers with as few as 200 servers in a specific lab can save over $100,000 over three years using Standard Edition, while eliminating 650 tons of carbon emissions, the equivalent to removing 110 cars from the road.
-- Cassatt Active Response, Premium Edition - For increased energy efficiency and application resiliency. Customers can upgrade to Cassatt Active Response, Premium Edition, which pools and allocates hardware and software as needed by applications at only a fraction of the cost of traditional high-availability (HA) approaches. Premium Edition is ideal for workgroups or sets of related applications with off-setting cyclical workloads like batch applications and ERP that can benefit from sharing common virtual and physical resources, reducing the need for separate, dedicated back-up systems. Premium Edition includes all capabilities of the Standard Edition. Premium Edition can provide "always-available" capability for priority applications at only 12 to 33 percent of typical HA costs.
-- Cassatt Active Response, Data Center Edition - For increased energy efficiency, high application availability, and server workload management in production environments. As customers look to change the broader management of their data centers to be more dynamic, responsive, and make better use of all of their hardware and software assets, they can move to Cassatt Active Response, Data Center Edition. Data Center Edition provides improved energy efficiency and application availability benefits from the Standard and Premium Editions, and also adds capabilities to control networks and provides redundancy of the Cassatt management capability through a back-up control node. Data Center Edition is ideally suited for production environments in which all components need high availability to deliver required service levels to the business. Data Center Edition can cut 36 to 45 percent of your entire data center capital and operational expenses.
-- Cassatt Active Response, Enterprise Edition - For optimal Control of all data center resources throughout an organization and across multiple geographies. Enterprise Edition will draw upon the capabilities of Standard, Premium, and Data Center editions. The product will be ideal for large, global organizations that want to leverage the pool of physical and virtual computing resources available across multiple geographies. Or, companies can "follow the moon" and support applications using the most efficient resources from geographically distinct data centers, leveraging time-based shifts in energy prices and computing demand. Companies will be able to use Enterprise Edition to provide application services that can be delivered to anyone, anywhere, independent of the location or origin of the underlying infrastructure.
"Pooling your IT resources and then using software to intelligently and actively control them can create a real shift in the economics of running a data center," said Michelle Bailey, research vice president for IDC. "With products like Cassatt Active Response, customers can start to see the type of energy efficiency, application availability, and data center responsiveness that previously were only possible by having much higher levels of infrastructure and operations investment. And, by allowing customers to begin with a concrete starting point around managing their power usage, Cassatt makes a customer's first step in this process easier, immediately relevant, and financially viable," Bailey said.
Get Started By Calculating Your Potential ROI
Customers can easily estimate their energy savings using the energy savings calculator at cassatt.com or they can get more detailed evaluation of their current energy consumption by requesting an Active Assessment from Cassatt.
Pricing and Availability
Cassatt Active Response 5.0, Standard Edition, will be available on November 16, 2007. Pricing starts at $200 per managed machine. Cassatt Active Response 5.0, Premium Edition, is available today. Pricing starts at $1,250 per managed machine. Cassatt Active Response 5.0, Data Center Edition, is available today. Pricing starts at $2,500 per managed machine. Cassatt Active Response, Enterprise Edition, will be available in the second half of 2008.
Upcoming Webcast with Leading Analyst about First Steps toward Energy Efficiency
Cassatt is hosting a webcast on Tuesday, November 6, at 10 a.m. Pacific time featuring one of the industry's expert analysts on green IT. The webcast will review potential high-impact first steps toward energy efficiency in your data center. To register for the webcast, go here: http://cassatt.com/greenITwebcast/ .
About Cassatt Corporation
Cassatt helps companies run a green data center with innovative technologies and software solutions to maximize energy and operational efficiencies. The Cassatt Active Response product line is based on patent- pending Active Power Management technology that safely and intelligently powers servers off and on, based on demand, cutting an organization's energy usage by as much as 50 percent. Cassatt is based in San Jose, Calif., and is on the web at cassatt.com.
Copyright (C) 2007 Cassatt Corporation. All rights reserved. Cassatt is a registered trademark and Cassatt Active Power Management and Cassatt Collage are trademarks of Cassatt Corporation. Third party marks and brands are the property of their respective holders.
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