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PCR talks to Chris DeBiase, COO at Quest Software about its latest solutions, the shift towards homeworking and the need for integration
Please could you tell me a bit more about the background of Quest Software?
“Quest is a software solutions company that has been providing organisations across all major sectors ways to realise the benefits of new technology. Since 1987, we’ve been helping our customers to simplify and conquer their IT challenges with regards to data collection, hybrid cloud environments, security threats, and compliance requirements. By utilising our vast portfolio of solutions, including database and systems management, data protection, identity and access management, end-to-end Microsoft platform management and unified endpoint management, we’ve been able to help organisations of all sizes to tackle many IT and business problems.
As we’ve grown and expanded over the years, we’ve taken great pride in our ability to consistently listen to and help our customers to respond not just to changes in their business environments but also to the general climate including trends, new technologies and regulations. For example, the swift move to remote working has been a challenging task for many of our customers, but we’ve been with them every step of the way.”
What is your role within the company?
“I joined Quest Software in May this year as Chief Operating Officer (COO). My role is largely tasked with further enhancing the company’s efficiency and effectiveness in its business operations, strategic initiatives, and corporate development, particularly given today’s unique business environment. We want to adapt and grow internally to continue to offer our customers the best services and solutions in a way that is conducive for them.
I am a firm believer in open and transparent leadership, so this is the approach I take when leading and making decisions for the company. Embracing and being open to new technology is another one of my philosophies, I feel it is a key part of what helps us to remain competitive and meet the growing needs of our customers.
I frequently draw upon my diverse career experience in several areas of business—product development, customer success, legal, IT, and sales operations— to help me address issues both creatively and holistically.”
Please could you explain a bit more about the new ISM Business Unit and the first solution announcement?
“We’ve recently launched our new Information & Systems Management (ISM) business which offers our customers one place where they can go for solutions and support that allows them to proactively manage critical data and assets and monitor application and database performance while maximising data storage and protection. We created this business unit because we recognised that our customers need to understand where their data is, properly manage it, and then protect that data as well as the users that have access to it. That can only come from a provider that’s cultivated a unique blend of proven solutions in unified endpoint management, data protection, and performance monitoring.
With security threats and ransomware attacks becoming more prevalent than ever, our customers want to ensure that both their cloud deployments and endpoints are secure and that their performance monitoring processes are running effectively.
Our recent enhancements to two of our pillar solutions— QoreStor and SharePlex— demonstrate how we help customers more effectively address these needs through integrated solutions.”
Please could you explain a bit more about QoreStor and SharePlex?
“QoreStor is a fully software-defined cloud storage, deduplication and replication product. This product was first launched to help customers accelerate their backup performance, provide variable block deduplication and help them to replicate faster and safer to the cloud. The product’s latest enhancements enable storage of long-term data for lowest available costs with industry-leading deduplication, compression, and encryption.
SharePlex is a database replication software which allows you to replicate Oracle data in a cost-effective manner, while also achieving high availability and increased scalability for integrated data and offload reporting. The new SharePlex 10.0 streamlines the path to Oracle Database 19c, whether on-premises or in the cloud as well as adds Kafka and SQL Server as target data platforms.”
How does this enable organisations to handle data backup, recovery and database management across hybrid environments?
“QoreStor 7.0 has several exciting new features including Archive Tier, Object Direct and Object Connect. Archive Tier allows data to be sent directly into AWS Glacier, saving time and money. Object Direct allows object storage for QoreStor’s main repository, for more cost-effective use of cloud storage. The Object Connect feature provides cloud-based solutions that leverage an S3 based connection to store data directly to QoreStor, which simplifies and speeds the process of cloud storage deduplication for cloud-native backup solutions.
SharePlex 10.0’s new features provide a smoother and cost-effective journey to Oracle Database 19c, on-premises or in the cloud. The solution has the ability to move Oracle data to Kafka for data streaming or SQL Server for offload reporting in near real-time. The support offered for Oracle Database 19c is now also extended to AIX, AWS RDS, Exadata, Windows and Solaris.”
Does this help organisations with the shift towards home working if so how?
“Yes, these solutions provide tremendous support to organisations who are working remotely. This pandemic has prompted a critical need to quickly shift environments to enable effective and continued work and collaboration, which has resulted in accelerated cloud deployments.
This swift transition to cloud has prompted organisations to quickly assess and understand what happens to the regular backup procedures in place with so many of their employees now at home. Their IT teams also had to effectively manage the vast number of new users in virtual desktop environments, storing and retrieving data from the cloud. These tough but mission-critical capabilities require effective tools such as QoreStor 7.0, which allow a seamless cloud backup process to ensure business continuity that’s cost-effective for any size business.
Organisations’ requirements to more easily and confidently manage their hybrid cloud environments is also enabled by SharePlex 10.0, which allows organisations to enjoy a smooth database replication process while protecting themselves from a data loss event.”
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