Pillar Data Systems Outperforms Storage Industry Leaders in Its First SPC-1 Benchmark Result

Pillar's SPC-1 Benchmark Result Demonstrates Outstanding Performance and Price-Performance; Tops EMC, IBM and NetApp

San Jose, Calif. – January 13, 2009 – Pillar Data Systems, the leading provider of Application-Aware storage systems, today announced that its Pillar Axiom 600 storage system achieved outstanding performance and leading price-performance results for business-class storage based on its first SPC-1 Benchmark Result. The Pillar Axiom delivered better overall performance and price-performance than similarly priced and configured products from EMC, IBM and NetApp.

SPC-1 consists of a single workload designed to demonstrate the performance of a storage subsystem while performing the typical functions of business-critical applications. The Pillar Axiom 600 achieved an SPC-1 performance result of 64,992.77 SPC-1 IOPS™ with an SPC-1 price-performance result of $8.79/SPC-1 IOPS™[1], which is the most cost effective SPC-1 result for business-class storage arrays.

As tested and published on the SPC website, the EMC CLARiiON CX3-40 achieved an SPC-1 performance result of 24,997.49 SPC-1 IOPS™ with an SPC-1 price-performance result of $20.72/SPC-1 IOPS™[2].

The IBM DS-5300 achieved an SPC-1 performance result of 58,158.69 SPC-1 IOPS™ with a price-performance result of $12.42/SPC-1 IOPS™[3]. The NetApp FAS3170 achieved an SPC-1 performance result of 60,515.34 SPC-1 IOPS™ with an SPC-1 price performance result of $10.01/SPC-1 IOPS™[4].

“While we are thrilled with producing an outstanding first SPC-1 Benchmark Result, we expect the Axiom will do even better under the intense real-world customer workloads for which it was designed. The ability of the Axiom to handle an influx of data while maintaining its high utilization rates and low operating costs is an area where the Pillar Axiom excels and truly differentiates itself from all competitors,” said Bob Maness, vice president of worldwide marketing, Pillar Data Systems.

The performance of applications depends on I/O and transfer rates, not capacity alone. It was with this premise that the Axiom was designed. The Pillar Axiom 600 increases efficiency by assigning priorities to applications and reducing I/O bottlenecks, while increasing transfer rates. As such, the Pillar system can sustain utilization rates well above 80 percent without compromising performance. With guaranteed 80 percent utilization, the Pillar Axiom can not only outperform the competition but lets customers use more of the capacity they buy.

Pillar customer Baylor College of Medicine needed the ability to store large amounts of data from its MRI scanners, which require high performance and reliability. Baylor recognized the value of the Axiom when it compared its high utilization rates to that of its competitors.

Justin King, the senior system administrator for The Human Neuroimaging Laboratory (HNL) at Baylor College of Medicine, notes, “Our lab relies on the ultra high performance and utilization rates provided by the Axiom storage system to power research projects that use functional MRI experiments for brain imaging, theoretical neuroscience and behavioral research, which generate an excessive amount of data. Pillar is the only company that guarantees us screaming application performance levels as well as overall storage efficiency in the data center.”

About SPC
The SPC is a non-profit corporation founded to define, standardize and promote storage system benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable performance data to the computer industry and its customers. The goal of the SPC is to serve as a catalyst for performance improvement in storage subsystems. It works to foster the free and open exchange of ideas and information, and to ensure fair and vigorous competition between vendors as a means of improving the products and services available to the general public. For a complete list of SPC Results, visit http://www.storageperformance.org/results.

[1] http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_spc1#a00073
[2] http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_spc1#a00057
[3] http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_spc1#a00070
[4] http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_spc1#a00066

About Pillar Data Systems

Founded in 2001, Pillar Data Systems develops Application-Aware Storage systems for midsize and enterprise organizations.  With the highest utilization rates in the storage industry, the Pillar Axiom solution is the most efficient storage system on the market today. The Pillar Axiom cuts administrative time and total cost of ownership by more than 50 percent as well as provides the only storage system that can differentiate services based on application priority. Designed from the ground up as the only true Application-Aware Storage system, the Pillar Axiom allows users to match multiple application characteristics to the appropriate service levels within a single storage platform. Pillar Data Systems is privately funded by Tako Ventures, LLC, the venture arm of Larry Ellison. 

The company is headquartered at 2840 Junction Avenue, San Jose, California 95134. The company can be reached on the Web at http://www.pillardata.com, by phone at 408-503-4000 or by email at sales@pillardata.com.

For further information, please contact:

Chris Drago
Director of Public Relations
Pillar Data Systems
cdrago@pillardata.com
408.518.4636

Don Jennings
Lois Paul & Partners
don_jennings@lpp.com
781.782.5756

Pillar Data Systems, Pillar Axiom, and the Pillar logo are all trademarks of Pillar Data Systems. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.