LeftHand Networks announced it has achieved 110 percent year-over-year revenue growth in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008. With more than 3,000 customers and 11,000 systems sold, LeftHand Networks continues to strengthen its position as an iSCSI SAN vendor. LeftHand Networks attributes its notable growth to strong customer demand for iSCSI SANs, larger SAN deployments and significant repeat business from existing customers, as well as its VMware go-to-market partnership and substantial channel expansion.

“Achieving triple digit revenue growth and surpassing key milestones of 3,000 customers and 11,000 systems sold is gratifying and reflects the significant advantages that LeftHand Networks’ SANs deliver to the market,” said Bill Chambers, founder and CEO, LeftHand Networks. “With an annual sales growth rate of 110 percent this year, compared with IDC’s market projection of 50 percent growth for the IP SAN market, LeftHand Networks continues to gain share and drive innovative product advancements.”

With almost 500 channel partners worldwide, LeftHand Networks’ Advantage Partner Program has grown this past year, increasing its partner base by more than 70 percent in fiscal year 2008. In addition, the company expanded its presence across Europe.

“LeftHand Networks’ SAN solutions provided Atwood Oceanics with a smart way to buy just what we needed initially while providing us with an option to grow our SAN system cost-effectively as our needs dictate,” said David Trahan, manager IT systems & support at Atwood Oceanics. “With its clustered architecture and powerful SAN/iQ software, LeftHand’s iSCSI SANs provide us with a highly available disaster recovery system that has driven significant performance and utilization improvements across the board. It was the ideal solution for our virtualized, multi-site environment.”

Additionally, demand has grown for LeftHand Networks’ Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA) for VMware ESX Server, a VMware certified solution that provides highly available applications and storage without requiring an external SAN. The VSA is available for purchase as a standalone solution or as part of Virtualization Solution Kits consisting of LeftHand Networks’ VSA software combined with VMware virtualization software.

Server virtualization projects are driving companies to re-evaluate their storage system solutions and iSCSI SANs are emerging as the preferred storage system in virtualized environments, surpassing both NAS and Fibre Channel protocols, according to Enterprise Strategy Group. iSCSI brings a number of advantages and benefits to virtualized environments due in large part to its emphasis on simplicity, cost containment and manageability. Server virtualization creates a dynamic application environment that requires an increasingly dynamic storage environment. Storage capabilities such as high availability, non-disruptive configuration changes, scalability, and simplified management become critical in virtualized environments.

“IT professionals are dealing with an increasing focus on boosting storage system efficiency, especially in terms of maximizing capacity utilization and system availability. Two key enablers of such efficiency are virtualization and more flexible storage systems,” said Mark Peters, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Although many storage systems can actually be impediments to broad, successful virtualization deployment, LeftHand Networks’ clustered architecture provides key advantages for such deployments and stands as a leading example of what can be done by optimizing storage system performance and utilization, in combination with simplified management, in order to provide efficient, cost-effective high availability and disaster recovery.”