Out with the old, in with the new. Storage that is.

OK green elves, time to get into the holiday spirit. If you've got excess or obsolete storage hardware hidden away in your data center, KOM Networks and Dell have a proposition for you.

They'll take your old equipment, recycle it AND give you a Dell Powered KOMpliance Archive of equivalent capacity in exchange, including a three-year maintenance agreement. The money generated by the raw materials in your old storage hardware will all be donated to Feed the Children, a 30-year-old international aid organization that donates food, medicine, clothing and other life necessities to those affected by famine, war, poverty or natural disasters. The goal of the program is to generate enough money to feed up to 1 million children.

KOMpliance is a custom storage solution that was built around the Dell PowerVault NX3000 NAS. The first donation to the program came from Angel Medical Center in Franklin, N.C., which is planning to use the new storage to help meet its HIPAA compliance requirements.

Dell OEM is a strategic supplier to KOM providing the platform of choice for the KOMpliance server and storage and at the same time delivering a global service coverage that few can match in this global economy. (This statement comes from KOM Networks CEO Taher Shaath in the press release about the recycling program.)

Aside from Dell, the other partner in the recycling effort is Technology Conservation Group, a registered recycler of electronic equipment that will track the donated hardware to ensure that it is disposed of responsibly. Technology Conservation is part of the National Association for Information Destruction, which is a watchdog not just for responsible disposal in the physical sense but also responsible disposal of data in order to comply with privacy and security regulations. The organization has reduced its normal fees so that more of the money can go toward KOM Networks' cause.