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Microsoft and Marathon Technologies Expand Relationship to Provide Fault Tolerant Computing to More Businesses


WEBWIRE

Companies sign development and marketing agreement focused on high-availability solutions with Windows Server.

Redmond, Wash., and Littleton, Mass. — Microsoft Corp. and Marathon Technologies Corporation today announced a development and marketing agreement designed to address the fault tolerant and high-availability computing needs for business customers running Windows Server-based applications in enterprise information technology departments and datacenters. The collaboration is focused in three areas:
• Help provide customers who deploy Windows Server 2008 and Marathon everRun® software a seamless path to extend high-availability protection to their critical applications.
• Help provide Windows Server and Marathon everRun customers with the ability to select the appropriate level of availability, from failover clustering all the way up to system fault tolerance, for each application.
• Help customers deploying a future version of Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor-based virtualization technology, to use Marathon everRun for a fault-tolerant virtual infrastructure.

“Marathon has been working for years to take the complexity and cost out of fault tolerant computing to bring business resiliency to the mainstream,” said Gary Phillips, president and CEO of Marathon Technologies. “This expanded relationship with Microsoft will help provide customers with practical fault tolerance for Windows Server 2008 today and for those customers wishing to consolidate mission critical, Windows-based applications on Hyper-V in the future.”

The development work is designed to benefit customers in the following ways:
• Streamline setup and installation. Windows Server administrators will be able to install Marathon everRun’s additional levels of availability in minutes.
• Seamless integration between levels of availability. When administrators add Marathon everRun, it will automatically provide them with a choice of availability levels.
• Confidence to run the most critical applications. Windows Server and Marathon everRun customers, in both physical and virtual environments, will be able to select the business and mission critical applications to get component-level and system-level fault tolerance protection.

The combination of Windows Server and Marathon everRun will help enable customers to deploy an appropriate level of availability for each application:
• Level One. Failover Clustering included with the Enterprise and Datacenter Editions of Windows Server 2008 for high availability that helps eliminate single points of failure — helping reduce downtime and guard against data loss.
• Level Two. Marathon everRun Component Level Fault Tolerance for critical applications with a requirement for little or no downtime and zero data loss.
• Level Three. Marathon everRun System Level Fault Tolerance for the most critical applications with a requirement for zero downtime and zero data loss.

“Our work with Marathon sets a course for more customers to deploy Windows-based applications, both virtual and physical, on cost-effective fault tolerant systems,” said Mike Schutz, director of product management, Windows Server division at Microsoft Corp. “Marathon has been delivering fault tolerant solutions for Windows Server for more than 15 years. This work represents the value of Microsoft’s ISV ecosystem to our customers, which allows software ISVs like Marathon to develop Windows-based solutions so customers can confidently use technology as a business advantage.”

Marathon everRun is available today for Windows Server 2003. Windows Server 2008 customers can use fail-over clustering today and for those customers who require component level or system level fault tolerance, they can use Marathon everRun with Citrix XenServer™ in Q2 of 2009. Customers who deploy a future version of Windows Server with Hyper-V along with Marathon everRun will be able to easily migrate their fault tolerant application deployments and enjoy all three levels of protection.

About Marathon Technologies

With more than 2000 global customers, Marathon is the world’s first and only provider of fault tolerant, automated, high availability and disaster recovery software for physical and virtual servers. Marathon’s everRun® software prevents outages and data loss – without IT intervention or specialized IT skills. Organizations using everRun achieve continuous availability, 100% data protection, and rapid disaster recovery – all through “one-click” operation. In the past year, the company has been awarded eleven major industry accolades including the “Best of VMworld 2007 – New Technology” award for bringing fault tolerant, high availability to virtual servers. CIO.com named Marathon Technologies one of “10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch in 2008.” The company was also recognized as a 2008 Computerworld Honors Program Laureate and named a winner in eWEEK’s Eighth Annual Excellence Awards Program. For more information visit www.marathontechnologies.com.

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