Avnet Partner Solutions, the value-added arm of IT distributor Avnet, unveiled a data and disaster recovery solution for IBM shops from Lakeview Technology, a data management software maker.

APS resellers will be able to offer IBM customers Lakeview's MIMX line of "information availability" software for a range of platforms, including i5/OS, Windows, UNIX and Linux, that is designed to streamline data availability and recovery solutions.

APS also unveiled a suite of managed service offerings with remote storage and recovery options at their own facilities to complement the offering.

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Both offerings make high-availability and data recovery solutions more affordable and accessible to a wider swath of VARs and customers, said Colin Blair, Director of of Product Marketing at APS.

"Most customers are doing some sort of daily backups or full-scale remote recovery," Blair said. "But we see a need in between market segments for folks who have clients with a need to replicate data either locally or remotely to another data center, but need it to be affordable and have ease of use. That isn't available today."

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"The sell should strike the continuity solution," Blair said. "Many of them need this for regulatory needs or customer demand. But the complexity and cost—you generally need somebody on site–are prohibitive. For folks not interested in managing the solution themselves this is a very affordable, easy-to-manage alternative."

The Lakeview is scalable to businesses as small as 10 users and under. A full deployment would start at about $60,000, but could be packaged with managed services and priced as a utility on a monthly basis, according to Blair. Even hardware could be leased, he said.

The Lakeview line includes:

• MIMIX dr1 for i5/OS that protects data and applications, offers management tools and assures information synchronicity for fast, reliable recovery.

• MIMIX ha1 for Linux, Unix and Windows that provides continuous replication and high availability of vital data and applications from a user's production server to a backup server. The solution monitors hardware and application software, detects failure and automatically initiates recovery.

Managed services support the offering, including hosting, monitoring and system administration; backup data storage is offered through APS's Avnet Vault, a secure location of client servers in the Avnet data center.

The offering would be attractive to solution providers interested in adding the offering without the investment in infrastructure and personnel required to build managed services capabilities themselves, Blair said.

The package will be sold under the solution provider's brand.