Bell offers business continuity soln to Canadian SMBs

TORONTO, CANADA: Bell and Geminare Incorporated have entered into a partnership to offer Canadian small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) a business continuity service that helps ensure continuous availability of applications and data, even in the event of a critical systems failure of disaster.

The Bell Business Continuity Service trumps current simple online backup solutions in the market with a highly advanced and effective high-availability solution, previously only available on custom built enterprise-class dedicated hardware and software systems.

For SMBs, which typically lack the resources to manage their IT infrastructure in the same way as their larger competitors, this offering delivers enterprise-class continuous availability, with no capital investment - a significant advantage in today's volatile economy. The agreement also simplifies the buying experience for customers who want to deal with a single vendor for procurement, deployment, service and support of their business continuity requirements.

Bell clients can now access the Bell-delivered system developed by Geminare to ensure their critical technology infrastructure, including all Windows-based file and application servers, operates uninterrupted with a high state of availability, even in the case of a critical system failure.

The Bell Business Continuity Service features:

* SaaS-based, data protection via real-time WAN replication of file servers and databases for Windows Servers, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft IIS, BlackBerry and Oracle.

* Application availability via failover and failback for file servers, Exchange, SQL, IIS and Oracle.

* Continuous data protection that provides data recovery in the event of isolated data corruption episodes.

* Disaster recovery site compliance through fully automated, scheduled tests of an organization's disaster recovery system without disrupting the production environment or existing data protection.

* Provisioning and deployment in days from start of customer management, replication and reporting.

"With Bell's Business Continuity Service, SMBs get the peace of mind that their data will be protected and available when they need it, at a price that meets their budgets," said Paul Rowe, vice-president, marketing and product development for Bell Business Markets. "Bell has the experience and expertise businesses can rely upon as the Canadian leader in delivering SMB solutions that help maximize productivity and ultimately profitability."

"With Geminare's solution, Bell clients can compete in the technology marketplace previously reserved for the elite Fortune 500 organizations," said Joshua Geist, CEO of Geminare Incorporated. "Application and data availability is no longer a 'nice to have,' it's an essential service clients assume has been taken care of. With Geminare, continuous data availability has finally become a reality with our rapidly deployed, enterprise-class solution. The Geminare platform lets Bell deliver disaster recovery and business continuity as a service to their clients, opening up highly sophisticated and powerful technology in a simple and accessible model," Geist said.