Marathon Technologies' twist on virtualization allows VARs to bring their customers to new levels of environmentally friendly technology through increased server consolidation and energy savings.

The company's EverRun software eliminates outages or downtime in Windows applications in both physical and virtual environments by synchronizing two standard Windows servers, including the operating system, applications, network interfaces, storage and data, according to Marathon. EverRun creates a single environment that operates like a stand-alone server and automates fault management so applications on that server don't see the failures if they occur, according to the company.

Click here to read a review of Marathon Technologies' EverRun VM software

Steve Keilen, vice president of marketing for Marathon, said eliminating downtime for mission-critical Windows applications lets solution providers offer an even greater level of virtualization than was possible just a few months ago.  Boosting server virtualization capability makes the software a great fit for VARs whose customers want to go green by further reducing their energy expenditures, consolidating into a smaller physical space and shrinking their environmental footprint, he said.

"Now, VARs can take applications that customers traditionally haven't virtualized, such as Exchange Server and SQL Server, and actually virtualize and consolidate these mission-critical functions," said Keilen.  Previously, most VARs' customers weren't willing to virtualize applications such as Exchange for fear of data loss or downtime, preferring to leave those applications on a dedicated physical server, he said.

With the introduction of EverRun VM, he said VARs can promise their customers that mission-critical e-mail and other server functions will remain available, whereas as recently as six to nine months ago applications such as Exchange weren't considered a good candidate for virtualization.

Read here about Verdiem's triple-green threat.

Keilen said demand for server consolidation is being driven by both large enterprise customers and VARs and resellers, most of whom are SMBs.  Some of Marathon's financial services customers with large data centers and large server farms are being constrained by power and energy restrictions mandated by the state, he said.  In those cases, he said EverRun software can not only help with compliance, but help ease energy usage and lower costs. 

Consolidating server functions can also increase server utilization, he said, adding that in some cases consolidation increased customers' server utilization rates from an average 15 percent to upward of 60 percent utilization. "The ability to run more applications on one server can also mean customers are not wasting resources and allowing servers that are three-quarters empty or more to suck down power and generate heat," Keilen said.

VARs, many of whom are themselves SMBs, are leveraging EverRun by offering the technology to SMB customers who are looking to make new investments, or who are planning to refresh older hardware, he said.  VARs can offer not only new server hardware, but consolidation services to bring clients increased availability, lower power and cooling costs, and higher levels of security and backup, he said.

"The VAR is taking the lead and providing a design with all of these benefits: higher utilization, lower power, high availability and disaster recovery, which isn't just 'green' for the environment; it makes customers' business more effective," he said.

The green technology movement is gaining strength and more VARs are moving toward leveraging it to increase their business, according to Keilen. 

"I think going forward [VARs and their customers] will become more and more operationally savvy and realize that going green means saving money.  I think awareness is rising as we speak," he said.