Desktop SRM Gets Second Look

As data proliferates and storage budgets don't, storage resource management (SRM) is moving from a big-company application to one that takes in smaller firms and departments.

The concern is twofold: First, small companies have often been left out of the SRM loop because products cost too much and are tough to implement. Second, it's getting more important than ever for companies to apply capacity planning and provisioning at the lowest common denominator in the storage hierarchy.

Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS), for instance, is working to make storage management improve at the desktop. According to Michael Hakkert, a spokesman for Veritas, getting end users to better filter what's stored on the corporate network will help companies save storage costs.

Veritas provides desktop Windows 2000 and XP storage views in its StorageCentral SRM suite, but it plans to release new pricing, a simplified management console, and software tweaks that make the package more attractive to SMBs (small to medium-sized businesses) and departmental users. Hakkert says the new kit will be offered in the first quarter of 2005.

Veritas isn't alone. AppIQ Inc. is also planning a version of its StorageAuthority SRM tools specifically for SMBs, possibly for release next year. Like Veritas, AppIQ supports desktop views in its wares today, but sees room for improvements such as widening the scope of SRM to incorporate iSCSI devices as well as Fibre Channel ones, since IP SANs are proliferating in SMB environments.Tom Rose, AppIQ's VP of marketing, says use of CIM and SMI-S specs from the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) are helping to eliminate the need for desktop elements or "agents" required for SRM software, thus paving the way for better tools.

Another big vendor, Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) (NYSE: CA), says it already has a view of desktops in its BrightStor Storage Resource Manager, but the company plans to work to improve the product's appeal to SMBs. CA isn't specific, though, on how this will be done.

Desktop SRM is coming from other sources, too. In October, Crosswalk Inc., a startup launched by Jack McDonnell, founder of McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA), released Crosswalk Storage Manager, an SRM package geared specially for SMBs (see Crosswalk Launches SRM for SMBs and Crosswalk).

This week, a U.K. company called Otium Software Ltd. has released a set of SRM tools aimed at SMB and departmental users (see Otium Unveils SRM Tools and Otium Brings Auto Data Protection). With simplified interfaces geared to nontechnical users, Otium's Utilistor is aimed at giving SMBs control not only of storage management on servers and networked arrays, but on individual desktops.

Elsewhere, Northern Parklife Inc. announced in October new pricing for its SRM suite that provides for lower-tier users with 1 Tbyte or less capacity (see Northern Consolidates SRM Products).Part of the innovation here is pricing. Up to now, it's simply cost too much for small companies and departments of larger ones to invest in SRM tools. Instead, storage capacity planning -- a key piece of SRM -- is done the old-fashioned way, with spreadsheets and homemade maps.

Other companies say they're already SMB-friendly. Among these is NuView Inc., whose StorageX tool was built on the Windows Distributed File Services (DFS) from Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT). According to spokesman Apurva Patel, NuView's always appealed to SMBs but has worked to improve its reputation for being a scaleable big-company product as well.

Appealing to SMBs is just one of several recent improvements being made to SRM products, which are also being augmented with automation and other enhancements (see Report Sorts SAN Management Mess).

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch