Proware Technology Corporation is a manufacturer of RAID storage array hardware and software. It is headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan with branch offices in China. Proware produces a range of storage products, including hardware storage arrays and NAS solutions. Its flagship product line is the Epica series launched in 2006.
Background
Proware Technology Corporation was started in 1992 by Richard Chiang, Willy Shiau, and S.T. Kuo. Originally a PC manufacturer, Proware quickly began expanding into the storage industry. Over the years, the company has been transitioning from a purely hardware driven company to a hardware and software company.
In 1994 Proware began designing RAID (DAS) subsystems, and then in 1996, Proware released its first RAID subsystem (model series: Power-5000). With the Power-5000 series, Proware became the first storage company in Taiwan to incorporate a backplane design into its RAID subsystems. Continuing on its success of the Power-5000 series subsystems, Proware launched its Fibre RAID product-line in 1998. In 1999, Proware released its Otto di Oro, Bambino, and Simbolo series RAID subsystems. Bambino was the first 2.5" hard drive RAID subsystem to be produced in Taiwan. In 2001 Proware introduced its SAN-Ready Fibre Channel products to the market, and in 2004, Proware came out with its Ultra 320 RAID subsystems and its iSCSI solution. With the increasing need of high density, Proware launched a 42 bay storage system, called as EPICA, placing Proware among the top 3 storage solution providers at this density.
Proware is not only experienced in hardware design and manufacturing, but also in software development. Also in 1996, Proware released its High-Availability (HA) clustering software ? Dataware. With Dataware, users can make use of an HA utility across a myriad of operating systems, ranging from SCO Open Server, Linux, Solaris, HP UX, IBM AIX, to a wide range of Windows platforms. In 2001 Proware came out with its Free-BSD version of NAS, and then in 2003, realizing that Linux was an up and coming operating system, developed and delivered its Linux kernel 2.4 version of NAS. Also in 2002, Proware introduced its data backup software solution - proBackup, and in 2005 a Linux kernel 2.6 version of NAS with HA was released into the market.
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