A major announcement at the conference was EMC’s introduction of V-Plex. As VMware’s vMotion has done with virtual machines (VMs), V-Plex enables vMotion over distance, allowing for "active-active" storage (I/O on both the local and remote site sides) and the ability to begin accessing storage immediately as soon as the VM appears on the host, in a matter of minutes. The needs for this can be many: natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina highlighted the need to have a solid backup and recovery plan in place. In other instances, efficiencies are key: perhaps when an organization is looking to keep certain data/resources in one data center for a certain period of time, but may move to another when the data is no longer needed, and can be stored.