Rainfinity Inc., a San Jose, Calif., vendor focused on the IP-based storage market, has announced plans to create a comprehensive service organization designed to promote the adoption of NAS virtualization.

The company, whose NFV (Network File Virtualization) platform is designed to provide scalable, continuous access to networked storage, is committed to developing a more responsive technical support program that delivers higher service and support.

The new service center, which revolves around a comprehensive, searchable knowledge base, will make information about network-attached storage virtualization more accessible—something company executives feel is a major obstacle to adoption of NAS virtualization technologies.

“There is a lot of confusion out there about what exactly virtualization is and how it can benefit an organization,” said Farzad Haghighi, director of customer service at Rainfinity.

Rainfinity’s new technical support engineering program, aimed at both channel partners and end users, will provide top-level customer service, guaranteed response time and 24-by-7 availability. To provide those services, the company plans to invest more heavily in increased technical support personnel and training, develop an expanded knowledge base, update CRM (customer relationship management) tools for support staff, enlarge the company’s support lab, and create a Web support portal.

The company began its push to overhaul its customer service offering after forging a channel partnership with EMC Corp. and its channel partners in March, Haghighi said, but there are other goals and benefits as well.

“Customer service information is a two-sided weapon for us,” he said. “First, we can take the information we get from our partners and customers and feed it into our development process, and secondly, we can make the information about how to use RainStorage virtualization to drive value to the customer more readily accessible.”

Zycko to Distribute Asigra’s Televaulting

Zycko Ltd., a Minneapolis-based distributor of networking, storage, security and communications products, will distribute Asigra Inc.’s agentless backup and recovery software.

Because of Zycko’s global reach, the company is expected to help Asigra’s Televaulting agentless distributed backup and recovery software gain better distribution around the globe.

Zycko distributes its products through a channel of resellers, systems integrators and service providers. Currently, its network includes more than 3,000 resellers on four continents.