Microsoft Already Does SRM

5:30 PM -- With its Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 (WSS 2003 R2) module, Microsoft is making a play at becoming a popular storage resource management (SRM) tool as well as moving into other areas of storage. (See Microsoft Widens Storage Window.)

But Microsoft already makes a popular SRM tool. Its called Excel. Many storage admins use that or other spreadsheets to manage storage resources now.

For instance, Hal Weiss, senior systems engineer of Memphis, Tenn.-based Baptist Memorial Healthcare Corp., says despite their limitations he still finds spreadsheets the most effective wasy to manage storage.

“They’re cumbersome, difficult to manage, and take lots of man-hours,” he says of spreadsheets. “But they are the most accurate.”

Of course, that doesn’t say much for dedicated SRM applications. And it means Microsoft’s main competition in the SRM arena isn’t EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, or Symantec. All it has to do to make users happier is to make WSS 2003 R2 a bit better than Excel for storage management.— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch