SteelEye Technology launches LifeKeeper Protected Program

SteelEye Technology, an innovator in data and application availability management for Linux and Windows, today announced the LifeKeeper Protected Program designed to make it faster, easier and more economical for independent software vendors ( ISVs ) to build high availability and disaster recovery protection into their applications. Through the LifeKeeper Protected Program, an ISV will receive technology, training, support and guidance to design and deliver a tested and certified application monitoring module which will work with SteelEye's LifeKeeper high availability clustering software.

"Attracting mission critical applications to Linux is one of Novell's highest priorities" David Patrick, General Manager for Open Source in Novell. "SteelEye's LifeKeeper Protected Program is an excellent way for key enterprise applications to make the move to Linux and to deliver the high availability characteristics their customers seek."

With minimal investment upfront, ISVs have a fully functional highly available solution to offer their customers. One of the most powerful features of LifeKeeper is its ability to provide application monitoring and high availability protection without requiring any modification of applications or the application environment. This has enabled SteelEye to deliver protection for the widest range of technologies and leading database products such as Apache, IIS, NFS, Samba, LVM, MySQL, DB2, PostgreSQL, Sybase, SQL Server and Oracle, as well as mission critical applications such as mySAP, Exchange and Sendmail.

Through the use of SteelEye's Software Development Kit, ISVs can themselves develop an application-specific monitoring and protection module which can be easily plugged into LifeKeeper. Applications are then protected against both planned and unplanned outages, providing the highest levels of availability.

All members in the LifeKeeper Protected Program who deliver certified application protection will receive a LifeKeeper Protected Logo to place on their products and websites designating their products as solutions that will never fail. Program members also have opportunities for joint marketing, co-branded collateral, and numerous lead generation activities. The LifeKeeper Protected Program is immediately available for all interested ISVs.

WebCT is an established provider of higher education's most flexible and widely used e-learning solutions. When WebCT customers requested a high availability solution, WebCT turned to SteelEye's LifeKeeper to easily develop their own HA protection module, to deliver a common solution across Linux and Windows, and to maintain control over their solution. "When our customers requested an HA solution we explored our options and were pleased to see that we could address this need easily with SteelEye's LifeKeeper" said Melissa Burke, Director, Technical Services at WebCT. "We didn't need to modify our software and the tools were readily available to develop the protection module. We were able to complete the project quickly and to deliver the functionality our customers requested. SteelEye was very supportive in this process."

"The goal of the LifeKeeper Protected Program is to enable ISVs of any size to bring business continuity characteristics to their applications" said Bob Williamson, VP of Products for SteelEye. "Our end user customers have gotten great value from using the LifeKeeper SDK and other tools to protect custom applications, and we are pleased to offer the same benefits to the ISV community."

For more information, visit the LifeKeeper Protected Program website at http://www.steeleye.com/protected or contact SteelEye Technology via email at protected@steeleye.com or via phone at Toll Free North America 1-877-319-0108 or International +1 ( 803 ) 461-3885.