Solution-Soft Joins DAFS Collaborative. DAFS Improves Performance for Internet and Enterprise Applications
(San Jose, CA) --- July 12, 2000 --- Today Solution-Soft, a provider of appliance applications for system and storage management, announced its participation in the DAFS Collaborative, an organization of storage industry leaders developing the Direct Access File System (DAFS) protocol for high-speed, high-availability systems and storage connectivity.
Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP), the leading provider of network-attached data access and content management solutions, originated this open initiative that includes leaders in the storage industry such as Adaptec, Agilent, Ancor, Brocade, Cisco, Fujitsu, Gadzoox, Highground, Intel, Oracle, Qlogic, Quantum, Seagate Technology, StorageNetworks, Troika, Vixel and many others.
“We’re extremely pleased to have Solution-Soft join the DAFS Collaborative as a technical and marketing contributor,” said Paul Hansen, senior director of marketing at Network Appliance. “The company’s involvement demonstrates its commitment to the advancement of storage appliance technology.” The DAFS protocol is designed to enable a new generation of high-performance, lowlatency storage networks. DAFS establishes new levels of scalability and functionality, Solution-Soft including the high-availability service levels demanded by today’s 24x7 computing environments. Its direct, memory-to-memory file access will dramatically enhance the performance of Internet, collaborative, e-commerce and database applications.
Specifically, the DAFS technology will employ intelligent storage appliances based on open standards to deliver enterprise-class functionality required by time sensitive, mission critical applications – at a fraction of the cost of traditional, mainframe and clustering technologies. By using the Virtual Interface (VI) architecture as the underlying transport mechanism, bulk data is transferred directly to and from application memory buffers. VI also allows applications to access VI-capable hardware directly without operating system (OS) intervention. The results are minimal latency and low overhead for data sharing, which in turn boost system scalability and performance. Network Appliance estimates that the total performance improvement available from these optimizations will be approximately 40%, as measured by standard industry benchmarks.
Paul Wang, Solution-Soft president and CEO added, “As an appliance applications company, we are excited to be part of the DAFS Collaborative. This protocol will tighten the links between storage appliances and server systems, and I applaud the collaborative for creating these opportunities and solutions for the market.”
About the DAFS Collaborative
The DAFS Collaborative was recently formed by industry leaders to make the Direct Access File System protocol available to the industry. The collaborative will solicit industry review and feedback before the new file system is submitted to an appropriate standards body. More information on the specification, industry supporters and technical detail is available on the group’s website at www.DAFScollaborative.org.
About Solution-Soft
Solution-Soft, the industry leader in appliance application technology, develops highquality storage and system management solutions for corporate data centers, ASP Infrastructure providers, and storage solution providers. The company’s products have been purchased by over 2,000 domestic and international customers including AT&T, Boeing, FedEx, and 3M. Industry partners include Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HWP), IBM (NYSE: IBM), NCR (NYSE: NCR), Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: SUNW). Solution-Soft is privately held and is based in San Jose, CA. For more information, visit www.solution-soft.com.
