Tivoli unveils latest SAN product

Tivoli has unveiled Storage Network Manager, the latest release in the company's phased roll out of storage area network-related software.

Tivoli has unveiled Storage Network Manager (SNM), the latest release in the company's phased roll out of storage area network (SAN)-related software.

SNM operates and manages an installed SAN. Because no official open standard for storage software is currently available, SNM is built around a heterogeneous format that works with any combination of brands within the SAN.

"In a market with no clear standards, being heterogeneous is vital," said Robin Pilcher, Europe, Middle East & Africa marketing manager. "SANs will be an explosive market over the next few years, and both vendors and resellers need to be involved."

Pilcher said that deployment of the product would be split equally between direct and indirect sales, with the company handling enterprise-level installations. Training will be handled by the company as well as being outsourced to the firm's long-established channel partner Sagitta.

The release forms the latest part of an ongoing strategy by Tivoli to promote the take-up of SANs in the UK. Tivoli Storage Manager was released last year, and Tivoli SANergy, a heterogeneous file-sharing program for SANs, was launched in January. The final product in the range, Tivoli Open Systems Managed Storage, a maintenance product for a fully implemented SAN, will not be released for another year.

Despite a tentative take-up in the UK, the SAN market is set to be one of the biggest growth markets for resellers. Mike Ruettgers, chairman at EMC, predicted that the storage market will swell from $44bn in turnover this year to over $100bn in 2005.

But Paul Sangster, of storage distributor Hammer, was unimpressed with Tivoli's distribution methods. "They pick partners based on their revenue and therefore a lot of the smaller but well-qualified guys in the channel get left out," he said.

Tivoli will also release an updated version of its SANergy storage management software next week. SANergy 2.2 adds a suite of published programming applications for third-party integration and expanded platform support.