Liquid Computing Launches the Next Generation of LiquidIQ

By VSM News Staff
published: Wednesday, October 15 2008

Expands Partner Ecosystem to Make Even the Most Complicated Data Centers Easy to Manage

LOS ALTOS, CALIF. - Oct. 15, 2008 - Liquid Computing, developer of the world's first fully converged communications and computing platform, today announced it has released LiquidIQ 2.0 system that combines standard physical data center resources, such as servers, switching, operating systems, network interfaces and storage, with FabricBoss sophisticated management and control software to create a true end-to-end data center solution. Liquid Computing has partnered with some of the biggest names in technology including Microsoft, NetApp and VMware to give data center managers capabilities never before possible. With LiquidIQ 2.0, the entire data center can now be defined and managed in software, enabling new service offerings, an order of magnitude reduction in time to deployment of applications, and dramatically reduced data center operating costs through automation.

Today's complex, over-provisioned data centers, which depend on dedicated servers and compute resources for specific applications, take a heavy toll on personnel resources, hardware, floor space, and energy. Strong traction with customers and partners is testament to LiquidIQ's ability to dramatically simplify server and application management as well as reduce hardware requirements, saving floor space and lowering costs related to power and cooling:

• "We've built our complete business model based on the power, performance, scalability and efficiency of Liquid Computing," said Abigail Ransonet, founder of Abacus Data Exchange, a broadband wholesale business that was designed to be a smart alternative to the traditional data center. "Using LiquidIQ, we built our infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of a traditional build-out in a 400 sq. ft. space instead of 10,000 sq. ft. The dramatically lower recurring costs, along with our savings on hardware and management, allow us to offer extremely competitive pricing for our services."

• "Speed is of the essence in order to remain competitive in today's economy," said Chris Rader, founder of Rader Solutions, provider of comprehensive management information solutions to the construction supply industry.  "With traditional data centers it typically took two to three weeks to set up and support new customer applications.  Now that we've moved our data center into the Abacus Data Exchange, a move which took just 12 hours to complete thanks to the LiquidIQ platform, we are able to get our customers up and running within 24 hours. You can't argue with that kind of customer benefit.

• "Our alliance with Liquid Computing helps our customers overcome complexity in the data center with an innovative approach to dynamic management of compute and storage assets," said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions Marketing at NetApp. "Together we help customers rethink their data centers, resulting in lower overall operating costs for our target industries. We are helping our customers and partners to speed deployment of applications, ease provisioning and management, and maintain a competitive edge in their respective markets."

LiquidIQ Raises the Bar
LiquidIQ management software, physical system characteristics, and successful industry partnerships and integrations make it an ideal offering for enterprises and service providers that need to frequently deploy new applications or customer environments, routinely reconfigure IT infrastructure, overcome IT staffing shortages by managing more with less, rapidly provision network and server assets or verify and audit their disaster recovery/business continuity solution:

• Rapid provisioning:  LiquidIQ's diskless and stateless Logical Servers provide extremely rapid provisioning of servers and associated networking. Templates can be copied and deployed in minutes.
• Verifiable disaster recovery and business continuity: LiquidIQ provides verifiable business continuity as all application, operating system and network data is stored externally on network attached storage or SAN.  Simple replication of this data will provide business continuity at a second site.

• High energy efficiency: LiquidIQ uses 20-30% less power to provide the same processing power as equivalent clusters built using rack mount servers and switches.
• High density footprint: LiquidIQ enjoys more than a 6:1 ratio benefit for floor space for an equivalent amount of computing and switching.
• Hardware lifecycle management: LiquidIQ is based on a scalable chassis and software design that allows new generations of processors from different vendors to co-exist in the system and to be retired at a rate determined by the business.

LiquidIQ partnerships

• LiquidIQ is fully integrated with industry offerings to make data center management easier. Partnerships with Microsoft, VMware and NetApp ensure high performance, reliability and future-proof development roadmaps for years to come. These partnerships allow Liquid Computing to support virtually any type of computing deployment imaginable, ensuring customers can deploy a system that's easy to manage and modify.

"Everyone knows the current data center cost structure is untenable. But while many vendors are delivering point solutions using additional appliances or software overlays that offer marginal benefits at best, and often result in increased complexity to manage, Liquid Computing made virtualization of the entire data center - compute, communications and storage - a reality," said Greg McElheran, CEO of Liquid Computing. "You have to see it to believe it - Liquid Computing will change the way businesses think about data center computing."

About Liquid Computing, Inc.
Liquid Computing has delivered a new generation of IT infrastructure that is transforming the traditional server and switch configurations commonplace in data centers. LiquidIQ, the world's first fully converged communications and computing platform, provides flexible pools of computing, networking and switching resources and makes data center IT infrastructure easy to manage. For more information, visit www.liquidcomputing.com .