* Crossroads expands its SurePath family
Crossroads showed off a new data protection appliance at Storage Networking World in Dallas last week that helps customers protect the desktop and laptop data in their environments.
The company, which recently restructured and is in the midst of a product transition from storage-area network routers to storage and tape security products, unveiled SurePath ShareLoader and SurePath Read/Verify Appliance.
Both products are part of CrossRoad’s SurePath family, which also includes the File Migrator Agent, which migrates data from file servers to network-attached storage devices, and its Virtual TapeServer, which allows disk-based backup and recovery of data.
SurePath ShareLoader is an appliance for customers without IT resources. It allows them to protect their Windows laptops and desktops and let users retrieve data themselves. ShareLoader is managed from a central location and can back up remote and branch offices. Its management interface is Web-based and allows event logging, notification and report generation. In addition, it offers tape migration based on capacity-based thresholds.
ShareLoader emulates a disk-based tape library and is shareable among as many as 100 computers.
Crossroads is known best for the Fibre Channel bridges, routers and storage controllers it manufactures and sells under OEM relationships with vendors such as HP, EMC, Quantum, Sun and Unisys. As much as 50% of its business is with these OEM partners.
The company first expanded outside of its traditional SAN products in 2005 with the announcement of the DataMover 240f data protection appliance. Since that time, Crossroads has added tape encryption and database security products.
