Veritas Software Corporation today unveiled its roadmap for storage management, including plans to deliver advanced storage virtualization, expanded storage resource management (SRM) and a new management dashboard, VeritasVeritas Service ManagerVeritas, that helps companies align IT strategies with business priorities. The roadmap provides a strategic foundation to manage storage across complex multi-platform, multi-vendor environments, using a utility computing software model.
Components of the Veritas storage management strategy include:
Advanced Storage Virtualization: Application-based volume management technology wherever a customer wants it -- host, network, or SAN-level.
Storage Resource Management: Comprehensive SRM solution set to manage storage, both physically and logically, across UNIX and Windows environments.
Storage as a Service: Managing storage usage from an application and business process perspective.
Virtualization from any point: host, network and SAN-level.
Veritas is expanding its best-of-breed, host-based virtualization technology, Veritas Volume ManagerVeritas into the network. Working with industry-leading partners such as Cisco Systems and Brocade Communications Systems (See separate press releases, issued today), Veritas will extend volume management to the network switch platform in products that are scheduled to appear in the second half of 2003. Network-based volume management software consolidates storage management in the heart of the storage network -- the switch -- providing companies with another option to efficiently manage heterogeneous storage in enterprise SAN environments, helping to improve storage array utilization and control costs.
Additionally, Veritas is planning to expand its volume management offerings with the introduction of SAN-level, out-of-band virtualization technology, an extension of Veritas host-based virtualization. Scheduled for availability in 2004, SAN-based volume management will allow IT organizations to manage the entire SAN environment as a storage pool and provision logical volumes from a central management server.
In addition to providing virtualization technology throughout evolving storage environments, Veritas Software's storage management solutions include SRM tools designed to help companies proactively manage their storage infrastructure from a business perspective, optimizing utilization of hardware assets. Veritas SANPoint ControlVeritas and Veritas Storage ReporterVeritas software, combined with the expected acquisition of SRM technologies from Precise Software Solutions, Inc., will provide the foundation for the industry's most comprehensive and heterogeneous SRM solution set.
Veritas' existing SRM products provide an infrastructure layer that allows companies to automate the discovery and management of storage resources, and serve as building blocks for the company's SRM strategy. In the future, Veritas will focus on delivery of storage as a utility by tightly integrating these SRM building blocks with storage resource metering, advanced reporting, and policy enforcement. These advanced capabilities, scheduled to start appearing later this year, will help companies effectively manage data growth and provide cost accountability across the enterprise.
Veritas Software plans to expand its SRM suite to integrate technology from the recently announced acquisition of Precise Software, expected to close in Q2 2003. Deepening the company's SRM offering, Precise StorageCentralVeritas SRM software focuses on storage resource and quota management in Windows environments. StorageCentral software gives customers total control of enterprise Windows environments, helping to increase storage utilization and improve server availability and performance.
The Veritas storage management roadmap unveiled today provides a foundation upon which organizations can begin moving toward a utility model. The soon-to-be available Veritas Service Manager software is designed to allow IT organizations to define storage-related services such as provisioning and backup, monitor and report on the delivery of those services and accurately allocate costs. Service Manager allows companies to view and respond to the operational and business aspects of a total storage environment, transforming IT from a cost center to a value center. Veritas Service Manager is currently in beta with general availability expected later this year.
"Veritas' mission is to provide IT as a service which enables businesses to achieve higher performance and availability at a lower overall cost," said Mark Bregman, executive vice president of product operations, Veritas Software. "Our storage management roadmap is a major building block in our utility computing software solution set, giving customers a clear path to discover and measure storage usage, maximize asset utilization and effectively manage their storage network environments."