Data-protection software vendor BakBone announced support from top vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Network Appliance and Oracle for its recently unveiled Linux Advantage program at LinuxWorld Expo.

BakBone, which competes with Veritas and Legato in the backup and recovery software market, launched the initiative last month as a way to ensure that its NetVault software would work with many Linux distributions and enterprise applications without any glitches.

While Linux is widely deployed on Web servers and for infrastructure needs, customers often hesitate to rely on Linux for mission-critical applications because of the lack of certifications available to ISVs, one BakBone executive said.

As part of the initiative, BakBone will give ISVs a Data Protection Guaranteed logo and will work with the technical, engineering and development teams of each partner to ensure smooth integration.

"One consistent issue is [customer] concern about compromising their data-protection strategies," said Peter Eck, vice president of marketing at BakBone, San Diego. "With this, we can guarantee the software works [with other third-party software] or we'll fix it.

Initially, BakBone announced support for its program from key Linux vendors including Red Hat, SUSE Linux, Red Flag Software, Miracle Linux, Conectiva and TurboLinux. This week, the company also announced support from SGI, Sony, StorageTek, Fujitsu and Breece Hill.

BakBone has endorsed the channel 100 percent and has no professional services arm, Eck said. The company currently has about 75 partners and solution providers in North America including AMC, CDW, Bell Micro, Cambridge Computer, Custom Storage, Intervision, ExData and 4Front.

BakBone has also integrated simplified installation and automatic network discovery features into the software to ease deployment, Eck said.