NEWS

JUNE 2006
Maximum Availability wins major Regional
IBM Award

Bangkok, Thailand

A strong focus on the Asia Pacific region has been rewarding for Maximum Availability, the creator of the *noMAX Suite of Products and a world leader in IBM System i High Availability and Disaster Recovery Software Solutions.

Maximum Availability has been awarded the 2006 IBM System i General Manager’s Award for Best ISV Go-To-Market in the Asia Pacific region at IBM’s Annual Strategic Planning Conference in Bangkok. Accepting the award, Mr Kaz Handa, Maximum Availability’s Vice President – Asia Pacific, said that it reflected the significant focus the company has given to the region over the past 18 months.

“We are delighted to have received this citation as it reinforces the progress and investment Maximum Availability has made to date in this region. With more than a third of all IBM’s System i sites world wide in the Asia Pacific region it is a very important market.  The support we have received from IBM in the Asia Pacific and some of the region’s best System i business partners has been outstanding and we would like to acknowledge their contribution to our success. Our goal is to make the benefits of *noMAX’s HA/DR solutions ubiquitous for all System i users in the region and to ensure that their critical infrastructure is available to them - no matter what. This award reinforces that we are on track.”

In announcing the award to Maximum Availability, Mr Nick Lambert, Vice President, System i, IBM in Asia Pacific,  acknowledged the innovation, drive and business growth that the company had achieved in the Asia Pacific Region over the past 12 months.

“The IBM System i is the industry’s most complete, secure and integrated server in the market today, designed to run thousands of applications available in the world today.  We are pleased to work closely with Maximum Availability to offer the *noMAX Suite of Products on our System i, and this has enabled IBM System i to continue to be the market leading server synonymous with reliability, and high levels of availability demanded by our enterprise customers.”

Maximum Availability’s expansion in the Asia Pacific region is due to a number of key initiatives. They include:

• establishing an office in Tokyo to support the company’s rapid expansion into the Japanese market
  
• expanding the regional *noMAX team to help further drive market penetration and customer support. This includes hiring a full-time technical specialist based in Tokyo to focus on local technical support issues
  
• continuing to expand a region-wide reseller community that includes business partners based in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, The Philippines, Vietnam, India and Sri Lanka
  
• significant new  wins that include: Bayantel, Bank of Maldives, Komag, BMW, Pacific Brands, Westpac Banking Corporation, AON Security and Takagi Shokai
  
• Highly targeted and successful Demand Generation campaigns to capitalise on the extensive market opportunities and further drive sales. Key here has been the deployment of *noMAX scout, a free High Availability and Disaster Recovery tool designed to introduce the end-user to HA and DR replication
  
• Significant product development and localisation to conform to local regional business requirements. This includes developing a fully adapted Graphical User Interface (GUI) and translating *noMAX documentation for the Japanese market. Similar work is already underway in Korea and Mainland China

Mr Handa noted that the disaster recovery market is rapidly evolving in the region as the requirement for customers to replicate data in real-time to a remote location became an increasingly critical objective.  “This is particularly the case in the Asia Pacific where there have been a number of natural disasters in recent years, and this has focused the System i community’s attention on ensuring that business information is adequately protected from costly downtime and data loss.”

“With our committed regional focus underpinned by the *noMAX Suite of Products that provides highly integrated, scalable and affordable System i software replication solutions to business of all sizes, we expect 2006 to be a watershed year in the Asia Pacific Region,” Mr Handa concluded.