Zmanda Introduces First Business-Ready Open Source Solution for $8B Data Protection Market

Zmanda Aims to Commoditize Industry Dominated by Symantec/VERITAS and EMC/Legato with Affordable Open Source Solution

MySQL Users Conference 2006, SANTA CLARA, Calif. – April 25, 2006 – Zmanda™, the only company providing business-ready open source software for corporate data protection, today launched its flagship offering: the Zmanda Network with the new Amanda Enterprise Edition software.  The Zmanda Network is a suite of enterprise-ready software and services based on the popular Amanda open source data backup and recovery technology. Zmanda is the first company to provide affordable, easy to use and enterprise-grade open source software for the critical operational task of protecting corporate data. 

"At a time when protecting corporate data is becoming a top priority for all businesses, most data protection solutions are simply too costly and too complicated,” said Chander Kant, CEO at Zmanda. “Zmanda gives businesses proven, enterprise-grade data protection at a cost savings of up to 90 percent over proprietary solutions. The data protection market is ripe for commoditization, and Zmanda now offers a low-cost, simple and secure open source alternative to help drive this."

“For MySQL users and other businesses that are building IT infrastructures based on open source software, Zmanda's solution extends the benefits of open source to data backup and recovery," said Zack Urlocker, MySQL executive vice president. “The adoption of enterprise-grade open source software is expanding to core operational functions like data protection, and Zmanda is providing the first open source alternative for this large market."

Amanda: The World’s Most Popular Open Source Backup and Recovery Software

Zmanda's offerings are based on the widely-used open source backup and recovery software, Amanda. Initially developed at the University of Maryland in 1991, Amanda has been battle-tested and proven by the open source community for well over a decade. Now in all major Linux distributions, there are estimated to be more than 20,000 deployments of Amanda worldwide. 

Amanda's popularity is attributed to its openness, flexibility and ease of use.  Unlike many solutions on the market, Amanda is a robust network backup solution that can handle large, complex environments, but its low-cost and ease-of-use also make it ideal for smaller IT environments.

Jean-Louis Martineau, Amanda community lead developer and project gatekeeper commented: "Zmanda has taken a leadership role in enhancing Amanda, while fully subscribing to the Open Source development methodology and by providing collaborative tools like Wiki and Forum. Zmanda engineering provided tremendous help in releasing Amanda 2.5, a major milestone for the Amanda project that provides significant enhancements in security and scalability."

Zmanda Network: Portal for Amanda Community and Enterprise Users

The Zmanda Network is a suite of software and services that provide everything Amanda users need to successfully deploy low cost, enterprise-grade open source data protection.  The Zmanda Network delivers the services and support required for enterprise data protection and business continuity. Zmanda Network subscribers can receive benefits such as commercial-grade production support, the Zmanda Knowledgebase, automated software updates, security alerts and IP indemnification.  The first version of Zmanda Network is targeted at small- to medium-sized companies and departments of larger organizations adopting open source software.

New Amanda Enterprise Edition Software

A hallmark of the Zmanda Network is the new Amanda Enterprise Edition software.  Amanda Enterprise Edition is a commercial-grade version of Amanda built to address the requirements of the corporate enterprise.  It has been tested, certified and pre-compiled for leading operating systems by Zmanda engineers to work in a business-critical environment. Amanda Enterprise Edition was designed with a focus on enterprise security and usability that makes corporate system administrators more effective. Amanda Enterprise Edition is available as part of a Zmanda Network subscription.

Pricing and Availability

The Zmanda Network is available today in three tiers, tailored for different data protection needs. For community users, the Zmanda Network’s first tier, available free of charge, provides access to resources, such as whitepapers, tutorials, and community forums.

For enterprise use, Zmanda offers two affordable subscription levels to the Zmanda Network that include a range of premium-level software, support and services.  Zmanda Network annual subscriptions range in price from $50 to $250 per protected system.  For additional details and sales contact information, please visit www.zmanda.com.

About Zmanda

Zmanda (http://www.zmanda.com/) was founded in September 2005 to bring the benefits of open source software to the data protection market.  The company’s flagship offering is the Zmanda Network, a suite of enterprise software and services based on the world’s most popular open source data backup and recovery technology, Amanda.  Zmanda is committed to enabling the widespread adoption of open source data protection solutions in the enterprise.  Zmanda’s corporate leadership includes veteran executives with experience in enterprise storage and open source software. The company’s headquarters are located in Sunnyvale, California.

Zmanda is a trademark of Zmanda Incorporated in the USA. Other products mentioned may be trademarks of their respective corporations.