July 29, 2008 -- Optimum Lightpath, a division of New York-based Cablevision Systems Corp. and a provider of Ethernet-based managed communications services to data center clients across the New York metro area, has announced the launch of its Data Center Connectivity Services. Delivered over Lightpath's intelligent fiber-optic network, the services are specifically designed to enable clients with a range of storage hosting and backup capabilities, including business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR), remote replication, backup and recovery, data center storage area network, and disk and transaction mirroring.
Lightpath contends that its proprietary fiber-optic network provides a separate and diverse alternative to traditional phone company networks, allowing diversity for businesses and data center companies seeking storage hosting and backup services, while ensuring protection of data in the case of a network interruption.
"Data storage has become a critical issue impacting every market segment, and every business, regardless of size. Off-site data centers are a growing component of most enterprise data management architectures due to disk storage prices falling, and the reliability, administrative issues and costs of tape backup systems continuing to plague IT shops," comments Dave Pistacchio, executive vice president and general manager, Optimum Lightpath. "With the launch of our Data Center Connectivity Services, we're proud to provide our clients the type of flexible bandwidth -- low latency communications needed to remain on plan with their data center connectivity initiatives."
Lightpath maintains that businesses operating in highly regulated industries "with zero tolerance for downtime," such as financial services, healthcare and government, require extremely reliable mission-critical data center services. A host of state and industry regulators are now urging, and in some cases requiring, the development of business continuity plans to ensure the backup, protection and recovery of data on a long-term basis. Lightpath notes that Ethernet is rapidly becoming the technology of choice to address these critical data center needs, because of its ability to provide transparent connectivity over the wide area.
"We just did a recent survey of network managers," says Cindy Borovick, IDC research VP for data center networks. "The result? A resounding cry to move to Ethernet. It looked like the respondees were going to triple their investment over the next several years."
Optimum Lightpath reports that it is already partnering with data center service providers such as Blue Hill Data Services, Inc., a BPO management services company, Cervalis, Continuity Centers, Data Storage Corporation, mindSHIFT Technologies, and Xand. Testimonials can be viewed at: www.optimumlightpath.com/ourApproach_testimonials.shtml.
"The most complicated part of delivering the remote data center solutions that Cervalis offers to the marketplace is getting and staying connected. The high reliability and availability of Optimum Lightpath's point-to-point Ethernet connectivity solution is essential to our business," said Mike Boccardi, president and CEO, Cervalis. "By partnering with Optimum Lightpath we can now access the more than 2,800 lit buildings its network touches in the tri-state area, which has effectively opened the door to additional customers; that's a significant value add to Cervalis. We look forward to continuing to work with Optimum Lightpath's Data Center Connectivity Services."
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