3PAR announced a partnership with Tokyo-based ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) to deliver 3PAR Utility Storage products and maintenance services to customers throughout Japan. With this partnership, 3PAR gains the leverage of CTC’s network of 4000 sales and pre-sales engineers and approximately 100 maintenance centers across Japan to expand market coverage and value delivery to CTC customers nationwide. The partnership between 3PAR and CTC creates a strategic alliance designed to meet the demand for storage solutions to support the growth of utility computing, infrastructure virtualization, and green datacenter deployments in Japan.

3PAR Utility Storage was developed to serve as the storage foundation of utility computing. Utility computing enables IT organizations to deliver software and hardware as a service. At the core of utility computing is server and storage virtualization. Highly-virtualized 3PAR Utility Storage was built to support the delivery of enterprise IT as a utility service, to enable cloud computing over the Web, and to facilitate a new generation of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based applications.

Of critical importance to CTC is the fact that 3PAR Utility Storage also provides a green storage alternative for the Japan market. 3PAR Utility Storage was designed to reduce the number of disks that customers must purchase, house, power, and cool to meet the same business needs as traditional storage. This net energy savings has enabled 3PAR customers to reduce greenhouse emissions and lessen the carbon footprint of their data storage. With 3PAR’s thin technologies, customers have reduced capacity, energy, and floor space requirements by up to 75% and have achieved energy and cost savings of as much as 3,100 kilowatt hours or $310 per year for each usable terabyte of 3PAR Utility Storage deployed.

Through this partnership, CTC has agreed to sell 3PAR Utility Storage through an expert network of sales and pre-sales engineers across Japan who specialize in delivering large enterprise server and storage solutions for Enterprise, Service Provider, and Internet/Web datacenters. CTC has also agreed to offer maintenance services for 3PAR Utility Storage through its proven nationwide support network. The multi-faceted sales and support agreement between CTC and 3PAR offers 3PAR Utility Storage customers in Japan “one stop shopping” through CTC services that range from consultation for developing a comprehensive IT infrastructure strategy through to the delivery of rapid, proven, and secure solutions. CTC offerings also include application and database integration and consolidation, datacenter services, and migration services.

“3PAR applauds CTC’s recognition of the economic and energy-saving benefits of utility storage,” said David Scott, President and Chief Executive Officer for 3PAR. “CTC is an ideal partner for us given their experience guiding the Japanese market through the adoption of green storage with respect to energy-related datacenter initiatives.”

Under the terms of the agreement, CTC currently offers sales and support of all elements of the 3PAR Utility Storage platform, including 3PAR InServ Storage Server hardware, the 3PAR InForm Operating System, and 3PAR software products. These software products include 3PAR Thin Provisioning—designed to improve capacity utilization, 3PAR Dynamic Optimization—developed to give data mobility across storage tiers, and 3PAR Remote Copy—3PAR’s disaster recovery solution.