Pictured from left to right - 

Gary Lyng, Senior Director of Product Management, NetApp
Flavio Santoni, CEO, Syncsort Incorporated
Paul Giobbi, President, Zumasys
John Albanese, Senior Director, Syncsort Incorporated

IRVINE, CA – January 19, 2011 – Zumasys, a leading provider of cloud computing and infrastructure solutions to small-and-medium sized businesses, announced today that Kevin Fitzpatrick has joined the company as Director of Technical Support. Prior to joining Zumasys, Fitzpatrick enjoyed an 19-year career at San Diego based Roel Construction, most recently as the Director of Information Technology. Roel Construction was an early adopter of VMware and cloud computing and a long-term Zumasys customer before being acquired by Suffolk Construction Company in 2011.

“Kevin has a unique perspective as both an IT Manager and a business leader which we believe will benefit our customers,” said Paul Giobbi, President of Zumasys. “He personifies high-integrity and service and has already made a positive impact on the Zumasys customer experience.”

Giobbi added, “I am pleased that Kevin has taken over this important role at Zumasys. As our customer base continues to grow, we need a leader with the vision and values that can assist both our on-premise and Cloud customers, taking our support organization to the next level.”

Fitzpatrick joined Roel Construction in 1992 as a Project Engineer and was subsequently promoted to Project Manager and eventually to Director of Information Technology. He led all of the company’s technology initiatives; optimized and streamlined support processes; managed outside software development; and forecasted all necessary IT budgets and expenditures. Fitzpatrick consistently kept Roel on top of the technology curve by architecting and deploying the latest infrastructure technologies from Citrix, VMware, Packeteer, Salesforce CRM and ShoreTel. He won the Award of Excellence in Technology for use of Cloud Computing by Associated General Contractors of San Diego (AGCSD) in 2010. Fitzpatrick graduated Magna Cum Laude from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California.

About the Zumasys Cloud Computing Solution
Instead of paying for dedicated servers to run core business applications, Zumasys’ cloud model allows customers to dynamically scale their applications on a multi-tenanted farm of servers running numerous virtual machines each. Because Zumasys is VMware vCloud® Powered, additional server and storage resources can be provisioned automatically by the customer through a powerful self service portal. Zumasys uses best of breed technologies from VMware, NetApp and Cisco; rental software licensing from Microsoft and others; and provides a personalized migration methodology which makes Cloud Computing viable and affordable for small to midsize businesses with 50-500 employees.

About Zumasys
Zumasys helps companies of every size transition their applications and infrastructure to the Cloud. Customers access the latest software and hardware technologies for a simple and predictable monthly fee thus empowering them to focus on their core business instead of running IT. Having led the way in cloud computing for five years, Zumasys delivers personalized service, world-class reliability, integrated disaster recovery, and the confidence companies need to outsource their systems and applications. The company is a Microsoft Gold Partner and also works with Citrix Systems, VMware, NetApp, HP, Cisco, ShoreTel and SonicWALL to deliver leading edge technology solutions. Zumasys was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Irvine, CA. For more information, visit www.zumasys.com.

VMware and VMware vCloud® Powered are registered trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

You will be missed…

As an entrepreneur, I am often asked this question. I never could have imagined how my answer would change after the market drop of October 2008 and the ensuing 3 years of business. After the crash, it was painful to answer and I found that I would look for anything to talk about beside the business. I just stopped answering the question.

So, I was intrigued on the first day of my vacation last week, when my wife and I befriended a congenial older couple poolside. It turned out they had vacationed at the same Hawaiian resort for the past 20 years and they clearly had their traditions, sitting in the same $300 cabana every day with their kids and grandchildren. Over the course of the week, we ended up running into the “Washington Family,” as my two young boys called them, everywhere we went—at the pool, in the lobby, at the local coffee shop.

As we all enjoyed some much needed down time, I found myself getting comfortable chatting with Mr. Washington–I could tell that he was sympathetic to the cause of this entrepreneur. Yet I remained guarded, just as one of those calloused businesspeople that I swore I would never become.

But as our relaxed dialogue progressed over the next 7 days, I learned that Mr. Washington had enjoyed a successful and interesting career in the mutual fund industry, starting at the ripe age of 26. He enjoyed a magnificent 40-year run and had successfully sold the mutual fund business just 4 years ago, right before the megabank that owned it and whose name was synonymous with the fictitious last name of my friend, promptly tanked. Mr. Washington had played the market and his career perfectly. As his wife put it, he was now living out the last year of his swan song finishing up as a board member for the acquiring company, a $300B NYSE-traded financial services powerhouse.

On our very last afternoon together, the time had come and Mr. Washington leaned over casually from his cabana chair and in his soft voice said, “So Paul, how’s business?”

Immediately I was brought back to that moment on the treadmill in 2008, when I was watching the Dow plummet tragically with the ongoing news of Lehmann Brothers, AIG, TARP, etc. Having just bought a new building for our own business and knowing that our small bank would likely go under (indeed the FDIC did close it in November of 2009), I called my bookkeeper and made one of the most dramatic moves of my career–advancing our entire credit line to cash. Like any good entrepreneur, I was improvising. I was not going to lose the livelihood of my family and 40 others due to circumstances I couldn’t control.

But if I have learned one thing about the crisis, it’s that the economy was not the real story. The financial stresses were just symptoms—the real tragedies were in the challenges and personal conflicts buried in people’s lives. These were all forced to rise to the surface unnaturally and immediately. Employees and friends were suddenly dealing with personal strife, divorces, foreclosures, lost jobs, theft, mental and physical illness and worse. At Zumasys, we lost two of our beloved co-workers during this period and, as I write, my partner remains hospitalized with substantial health issues.

Chaos was and is all around us.

The financial crisis also threatened the healthy cultures of countless small businesses and we were not immune. Many of us had to play defense for a time. Offense is the biggest advantage of the small business but for a time it remained benched in the locker room.

But after I reflected on Mr. Washington’s question for a bit, I had this sense of peace and closure. It was acknowledgment from this man I had grown to respect that our own business had survived the un-survivable. We stared down the financial meltdown and we didn’t back down. We made tough decisions, we hired incredible new people and we layed the groundwork for an even better future.

The reality is that the chaos will continue to stubbornly persist and this may be “the new normal.” But when I look back on my first blog entry on the economy titled The Bad Market (click to see article from 2008), I find myself chuckling at the naiveté of the post.

Not talking about business leaves out one of the most meaningful, stimulating and interesting parts of my life.

Today our people are flourishing once again. There is a sense of camaraderie because together we overcame the most challenging business circumstances of a lifetime, and because of it we have a team that is ready for anything!

It’s time to starting taking about my passion again.

So, “How’s Business?”

It’s better than ever. And thanks for asking.

Highlights

• 2-3x performance over FAS2040
• Mezzanine slot for 10GbE or 2/4/8Gb FC (must choose one, slot cannot be empty)
• Can be converted to a shelf later by swapping controller module with IOM shelf module
• 2040 will replace the 2020
• Comes in either 2U SAS (DS2246 shelf) or 4U SATA (DS4243 shelf)
• 2U can be ordered with 12 or 24 disks (450GB or 600GB)
• 4U can be ordered with 12 or 24 disks (1TB, 2TB, or 3TB)
• Max Aggr size = 60TB
• Existing SAS Shelves cannot be converted into FAS2240
• Hyperthreading CPU
• 2x 6Gb SAS ports (2040 only has 1x 3Gb SAS ports)
• 2x 4Gb FC ports (2040 has 0 FC ports)
• Spindle count increased from 136 to 144
• Controller modules in 2U FAS2240 is side-by-side (instead of top/bottom setup)
• Can MP-HA internal disks using external cables (instead of SP-HA currently on the 2040)
• Single path disk are recommended until 8.1.x when SESv2 is implemented
• Must set FAS2240 shelf ID when using external SAS storage

There’s some disinformation out there about the new VMware licensing. Let’s break through the madness and make some easy sense of the new VMware licensing model. We’ll split it in three categories: What Changed?, Maybe This Matters and Don’t Freak Out.

What Changed?

If you have a virtual server to physical server ratio of less than 10:1 (that’s 10 virtual servers for each host; I.e. if you have 3 physical host servers, but have 30 or less virtual machines) – then you don’t have to care. Nothing changes for you at all. Continue buying VMware licensing just like you always have and enjoy the bliss of leaving the drama to your momma.

Maybe This Matters

If you have a virtual server to physical server ratio between 10:1 and 15:1, call your friendly Zumasys Account Manager so we can crunch some numbers for you. It all depends on how much vRAM you’re allocating to each virtual server. We’ll take a look and help you decide whether it matters…or not.

Don’t Freak Out

So…turns out you’re one of those guys. You know who you are. You’ve got host servers rockin’ 128GB of RAM; you’re killin’ it with 50+ VMs per box. Yeah…this might have an impact on you. VMware took a look at their largest customers, and discovered an amazing thing…that we buy 2 CPU-based licenses and then over-allocate memory like RAM-hungry zombies. So they made the same move any of us would have made if vSphere were our product; they started charging us for the way we’re using it. So if this is you, then yeah…it is a change. But don’t freak out.

Give us a call, we’ll help demystify the madness, identify exactly how it’s going to impact your business…and everything will be just fine.

Don’t sweat…we’re here to help.

Rock on,
Dave McCary
Your Friendly #GeekTranslator

PS – In case this wasn’t quite nerdy enough for you…here’s a matrix outlining the vRAM entitlement limits per license in the new model. Cheers.

Still not nerdy enough? Alight then…don’t get rowdy…here you go.

Chris Cummings, vice president of Products and Solutions Marketing, NetApp
“As enterprises look for ways to accelerate their businesses, they recognize that the decisions they make now affect not only how they compete today but also how prepared they are for the future. For many, there’s substantial upside to evolving from a virtualized environment to a cloud architecture. NetApp and VMware are delivering a secure, integrated solution that allows customers to build on their virtualized environments without having to rip and replace their current IT infrastructures. This saves invaluable time, money, and productivity that they can reinvest back in the business.”

Gary Green, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware
“VMware and NetApp have built a strong relationship to deliver innovative solutions that help customers derive value from existing IT investments while preparing for the datacenter of the future. With this new solution, we’re taking another step forward in helping joint customers virtualize more of the IT environment — including their most demanding business-critical applications — to continue building the foundation for cloud computing.”

About Zumasys
Zumasys helps companies of every size transition their applications and infrastructure to the Cloud. Customers access the latest software and hardware technologies for a simple and predictable monthly fee thus empowering them to focus on their core business instead of running IT. Having led the way in cloud computing for five years, Zumasys delivers personalized service, world-class reliability, integrated disaster recovery, and the confidence companies need to outsource their systems and applications. The company is a Microsoft Gold Partner and also works with Citrix Systems, VMware, NetApp, HP, Cisco, ShoreTel and SonicWALL to deliver leading edge technology solutions. Zumasys was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Irvine, CA. For more information, visit www.zumasys.com.

About NetApp
NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) creates innovative storage and data management solutions that accelerate business breakthroughs and deliver outstanding cost efficiency. Discover NetApp’s passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.

About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) delivers virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. With the industry leading virtualization platform — VMware vSphere® — customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, improve agility, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2010 revenues of $2.9 billion, more than 250,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware is the leader in virtualization which consistently ranks as a top priority among CIOs. VMware is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

The VMware vCloud® powered program continues to gain traction allowing service providers a broad array of public clouds compatible with the VMware platform. More than 30 VMware Service Provider Partners, including Zumasys, are now delivering VMware vCloud® Powered services based on VMware vCloud Director and the vCloud API. Read More