SRM Control Issues Surface

The need for remote monitoring of SAN gear is opening up a new market for embedded software and associated services, while raising some knotty legal questions for resellers and integrators.

Late last week, Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek) (NYSE: STK) won a preliminary injunction in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts against a reseller for allegedly using StorageTek's proprietary software to offer tape library services to end customers.

A judge is allowing StorageTek's complaint that an outfit called Custom Hardware Engineering and Consulting Inc. tweaked software embedded in StorageTek's tape libraries in order to get access to the vendor's so-called Maintenance Code. That's the software that monitors the libraries internally and reports trouble to remote technicians. Normally, the code is accessible only to the vendor's personnel, so by using it the reseller allegedly violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

"[StorageTek] has copyright registration certificates for virtually all versions of its Maintenance Code and has taken great pains to protect access thereto with a proprietary algorithm..." the court document states. "[D]efendants have circumvented its security measures and are using the Maintenance Code in their business as a third-party service provider..."

At press time, StorageTek spokesman Joe Fuentes acknowledged the progress of the injunction but hadn't gotten back to us on what the ruling could mean to other resellers. The news, however, points to a growing interest in remote management as a selling point for both storage vendors and third parties.At the recent Storage World Conference in Long Beach, Calif., for instance, Tek-Tools Inc., which makes storage resource management (SRM) software, revealed plans to encourage vendors to enhance their internal maintenance plans with Tek-Tools wares.

"We can do remote monitoring and reporting of backups, which could be sold by a vendor as a service," says Tek-Tools CEO Ken Barth. He says other modules of Tek-Tools' Profiler Rx series, including reporting agents for direct-attached storage, NAS gear, backup systems, switches, HBAs, and RAID arrays, could also be used to add value to services offered by non-vendor third parties.

Presently, Tek-Tools has deals with Siemens AG (NYSE: SI; Frankfurt: SIE) and Xiotech Corp. (see Siemens Picks Tek-Tools and Tek-Tools Works With XIOtech) and Barth says his company's talking to a range of tape library vendors about enhanced maintenance services based on Tek-Tools' products.

Tek-Tools isn't alone. Advanced Digital Information Corp. (Nasdaq: ADIC) announced last week that it's allied with Motive Inc., a company that offers automated monitoring and control software to a range of industries, to provide remote monitoring and automated management of its tape libraries, starting in the fourth quarter of 2004 (see ADIC Intros Remote Service Initiative).

Motive, which recently filed for public offering, also has OEM arrangements to sell its embedded software to EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), StorageTek, and Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS), and product manager David Cramer says Motive will pursue more SAN business in the future. "Most SAN environments are very heterogeneous... There's still a lot of difficulty getting management information on a problem in an array, fabric, director, or HBA," he notes.Will these remote capabilities cause trouble of the kind that just passed through Massachusetts court? ADIC spokesman Steve Whitner doesn't think so. His company's choice of Motive is part of a series of remote management enhancements ADIC plans to make to its wares, but he doesn't anticipate any legal problems with resellers, because he says ADIC's reseller arrangements are clear-cut.

"Our channel partners sell both our products and our services," he maintains. "There's no incentive for them to compete with us on service."

Still, all this activity indicates there's clearly a value to hardware suppliers in providing enhanced remote management services to their customers -- a value that their OEMs and resellers might start to eye enviously as time passes. What's more, at least one industry observer is ready to battle the rights of big vendors to monopolize that value.

"The DMCA was meant to stop digital piracy, not inhibit legitimate competition in the computer services market. How many more markets will we allow this law to kill before someone fixes it?" writes Jeff Schultz, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an online column. EFF is a nonprofit group dedicated to challenging laws like the DMCA. Schultz's comments, along with the Massachusetts ruling, indicate growing interest in remote SAN management could signal the start of an ongoing controversy.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch0