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Mobile
Telephone Networks (MTN) Chooses FileTek and Says "Y'ello*"
to StorHouse for Its Enterprise Archiving Solution -
StorHouse Helps MTN Meet Government
Regulatory Compliance Rules, Achieve Cost Savings, and Enhance Overall
Operational Efficiency
Rockville, MD (November
2, 2006) - FileTek, Inc., a data access and management software provider,
today announced that Mobile Telephone Networks (MTN), one of South Africa's
leading telecommunications companies, selected FileTek's proven StorHouse®
technology as the central archive repository for MTN's enterprise-wide
corporate data. MTN, a well-established and fast-growing company with
over 31.5 million subscribers, provides cellular, satellite, and Internet
access services to 21 African and Middle Eastern countries. FileTek's
success follows a rigorous tender process. During this process, archiving
experts from Bytes Technology Group supported MTN with its project design
and selection.
Initially, StorHouse
is functioning as the secure central archive repository for MTN's call
detail records (CDRs) to provide compliance with the South African Regulation
of Interception of Communications Act 70 of 2002 (RIC). RIC dictates that
telecommunications providers must support the interception and archiving
of qualifying direct and indirect communications by March 27, 2006. To
demonstrate its commitment to good corporate governance, MTN complied
before the mandatory deadline and is using FileTek's unique relational
technology to store and manage three years of call detail history over
and above the RIC requirements.
During phase one of
the project, MTN will load approximately 100 terabytes of detailed CDRs
to StorHouse relational tables and regulatory compliant files. During
subsequent project phases, MTN will add more applications - e-mail archiving,
imaging, data warehouse detail records, and business documents - to the
archive, boosting total StorHouse data storage projections to multiple
petabytes over the next several years. StorHouse's comprehensive software
feature set and scalability will enable MTN to sustain this projected
growth while immediately satisfying government regulatory compliance rules
for CDR data.
StorHouse is a data
storage and access management system specifically designed to administer
massive amounts of fixed content, historical data and their associated
backups. StorHouse technology combines industry-leading scalable storage
devices and Open System processors with specialized storage management
(StorHouse/SM), relational database management (StorHouse/RM), and file
system interface (StorHouse/RFS) software components. MTN is using StorHouse/SM
and StorHouse/RM to load, retrieve, and manage the CDR archive and StorHouse/RFS
to store and retrieve supporting file-based data.
StorHouse software
is engineered to support large archives such as the MTN initiative.
StorHouse/SM, the StorHouse storage management component, promotes data
longevity through storage virtualization and automatic storage management.
StorHouse can accept new storage devices and media types dynamically as
they become available and migrate existing data to them automatically
and transparently to user applications. The system remains storage vendor
independent by incorporating best-of-breed, available technology from
multiple suppliers. Furthermore, to promote high data availability and
business continuance, StorHouse/SM supports automatic backup, recovery,
migration, replication, retention, and data protection features.
StorHouse/RM, the
StorHouse relational database management component, works in conjunction
with StorHouse/SM to specifically administer the storage, access, and
movement of relational data. Features provide ODBC, SQL, and ESQL interfaces;
high-speed FTP data load and unload utilities; RDBMS gateways to Oracle,
IBM DB2 UDB, Microsoft SQL Server, and Sybase; and a patented partitioning
scheme that enables scaling to multiple petabytes. StorHouse/RM supports
highly available, cost-effective relational archives that satisfy enterprise-wide
information lifecycle management and compliance requirements.
StorHouse/RFS, the
StorHouse file system interface component used for file-based applications,
provides the unprecedented scalability required to support billions of
records. Unlike traditional file systems, StorHouse/RFS provides inherent
scalability by using relational technology instead of inode- and link-based
structures to index and locate user files. The software simply presents
itself to an application as a virtual drive (an NFS, NTFS, or CIFS mount
or share point). Applications read and write files to the virtual drive
just as they would to any mapped Windows® drive or network file system
(NFS) mount point.
Erich Roberts, MTN
SA IS Group Executive, commented, "In planning this project, MTN
devised an enterprise archive strategy that would encompass all archive
requirements in a single, centrally managed repository. After evaluating
major vendor solutions, MTN chose FileTek's StorHouse product to provide
this central archive function because, in our opinion, only StorHouse
checked off all the boxes for operational efficiency, legal compliance,
cost savings, revenue assurance, scalability, data consistency, and data
integrity standards that MTN's business demands. Our initial RIC implementation
makes us confident that StorHouse can both satisfy our current legislative
commitments and provide the capability to deliver future business benefits
as MTN grows and develops. For example, in the near future, we plan to
improve the overall cost-effectiveness and efficiency of our current billing
system by offloading most historical billing data from that system to
StorHouse. We are confident that StorHouse and FileTek will help us achieve
these goals."
Ann Dyball, FileTek's
Regional Area Manager, added, "FileTek is proud to add MTN to our
list of telecommunications customers. StorHouse enables MTN to meet government
regulatory compliance rules and provides the scalability needed to accommodate
the company's growing data volumes generated by expanding customer bases
and new service offerings. MTN is an exciting, innovative company, and
FileTek looks forward to a long-term business relationship with them."
About FileTek
FileTek, Inc. is a provider of data storage and access management solutions,
enabling enterprises, worldwide and across multiple industry segments,
to rapidly access ever-growing volumes of historical data. FileTek is
headquartered at 9400 Key West Avenue, Rockville, MD 20850. Telephone:
301-251-0600. Fax: 301-251-1990. FileTek's international headquarters,
FileTek Ltd, is located at One Northumberland Ave., London WC2N 5BW. Telephone:
+44 (0) 207 872 5583. Fax: +44 (0) 207 753 2829. The company also has
offices across North America. Internet: www.filetek.com.
About MTN
The MTN Group is an Africa and Middle East-focused holding company that
invests in the telecommunications industry, providing cellular, satellite,
and Internet access services to 21 African and Middle East countries.
MTN supports sustainable development with its rollout of telecommunications
services and its investment in community projects focusing on education,
science and technology, and arts and culture.
*"Y'ello"
is MTN's special welcoming greeting to its employees, vendors, current
customers, and future service subscribers.
©2006 FileTek.
All rights reserved. FileTek and StorHouse are U.S. registered trademarks
of FileTek, Inc. Other trademarks included herein are the properties of
their respective owners. The following U.S. patents protect StorHouse:
4,864,572; 5,247,660; 5,727,197; 6,049,804.
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