Overland Customers Recognized for Outstanding Technology Achievements by IDG’s Computerworld Honors Program

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC, Ocean Alliance and Girl Scouts of the USA Receive Prestigious Honors for Visionary Implementations of Information Technology

Overland Storage, Inc. today announced that three esteemed customers, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC, Ocean Alliance and Girl Scouts of the USA, have been bestowed with Laureate awards by IDG’s Computerworld Honors Program. This year’s honorees will be commemorated tonight during the 21st Annual Laureates Medal Ceremony & Gala Awards Evening at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C.

For more than two decades, Computerworld Honors has acknowledged those individuals and organizations that have used information technology to benefit society. Overland’s award-winning customers were acknowledged for their highly innovative data protection solutions, which encompassed Overland’s disk, tape and NAS products.

Preserving Rock History in NYC with Snap Server NAS
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC is an experiential, technologically advanced exhibition that focuses on the greatest moments in rock history. As an adjunct location to the Cleveland-based Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the New York venue features state-of-the-art galleries with special lighting and sound to simulate a rock concert experience. To protect priceless pieces of music history, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC invested in a leading-edge video surveillance solution featuring 48 high-resolution IP network cameras from Mobotix Vision Systems integrated with Overland’s scalable, high-performance Snap Server® 620 network-attached storage.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC leverages its unified security and storage solution to thoroughly monitor activity in its 25,000 square-foot facility while retaining data-intensive video footage for up to a month. The ability to manage the system remotely enables staffers to ensure the highest levels of safety for visitors as well as an extra measure of protection for irreplaceable artifacts.

“We are extremely pleased to be recognized by the Computerworld Honors program for the work we’ve done to preserve irreplaceable pieces of rock & roll history,” says David Waggett, general manager of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC. “Security was of paramount importance, so we partnered with Overland and Mobotix to deploy a state-of-the-art solution that provides an extra measure of protection without disrupting the overall experience. As an extension of our eyes and ears, we expect the new cost-effective yet powerful video surveillance solution to become a critical part of our operation.”

Safeguarding Scientific Research with REO/NEO Disk-to-Tape
Overland’s second award recipient is Ocean Alliance, a non-profit organization that collects a broad spectrum of data on whales and ocean life relating to toxicology, behavior, bioacoustics and genetics. As part of its research, Ocean Alliance scientists take unique samples of environmental conditions and mammals for research and study, which require special precautions to ensure long-term data integrity and viability.

By relying on Overland’s REO® SERIES disk-based and NEO® SERIES tape-based backup and recovery appliances, Ocean Alliance can consolidate and archive data in the most efficient, reliable and cost-effective manner possible. As a result, the alliance is better positioned to be the foremost expert on whales and ocean life, with a wealth of data and samples from around the world—all of which have been stored, correlated and protected in order to support a wide range of scientific research endeavors.

“It’s an honor to receive an award for the measures Ocean Alliance has taken to ensure that crucial scientific data is readily available and secure," says Iain Kerr, CEO of Ocean Alliance. "Our deployment of Overland’s highly reliable, economical disk-to-tape solutions helps us protect one-of-a-kind research data that has far-reaching impact on the health of humans, the oceans and the animals that inhabit them."

Tiered Data Protection Boosts Business Continuity for the Girl Scouts
Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) continually leverages leading-edge technology to support operations and provide more than 400 employees with the latest tools to best serve its membership. When an influx of publishing and web-related data caused storage to surge by 50 percent to 5 TBs and overtaxed GSUSA’s existing tape-based data protection platform, the organization turned to Overland and deployed a REO 9000 disk-to-disk (D2D) VTL appliance and NEO 2000 tape library to support business continuity while setting the stage for more interactive tools to improve information sharing and collaboration among the Girl Scouts’ employees and councils worldwide.

“We are proud to receive the renowned Computerworld Honors award for our implementation of Overland’s REO and NEO backup and recovery appliances,” says Bob O’Connor, CTO for Girl Scouts of the USA. “With our multiple tiers of Overland data protection, we can take disaster recovery planning to the next level while achieving faster backups and restores, a longer window of disk-based data retention and highly reliable long-term archival.”

According to Ravi Pendekanti, vice president of worldwide marketing for Overland Storage, the 2009 Computerworld Honors Program laureates reinforce the vital role Overland continues to play in helping its customers deploy world-class data protection solutions. “For the third consecutive year, Computerworld is commemorating Overland customers for their outstanding achievements in technology,” he explains. “We’re very proud of their accomplishments and are extremely pleased that once again, our REO disk-based backup and recovery VTL appliances and NEO tape libraries are integral to the success of award-winning data protection projects.”

Founded by International Data Group (IDG) in 1988, the Computerworld Honors Program is governed by the not-for-profit Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation. In its 21st year, Computerworld Honors is the longest running global program to honor individuals and organizations that use information technology to benefit society.