STORAGE

Integrated Suite of Software Tools Improves Storage Utilization and Performance -- IBM today announced a new version of IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center, software that can centralize management of multi-vendor storage systems, improve administrative efficiency, reduce business risk and improve storage utilization. The software can help customers access, manage and deliver information more efficiently to enable Information on Demand and leverages IBM’s IT Service Management initiative – designed to integrate and automate IT processes. IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center monitors storage systems, SAN fabrics, and storage capacity from a single management console and captures performance data in a centralized location. This integrated set of tools can help customers increase the utilization of their storage systems, improve the productivity of their staff, reduce the risks associated with business application downtime and meet application service levels in the storage environment. With this common management layer, IT administrators are no longer burdened by the cumbersome task of monitoring systems from many different vendors with varying formats. TotalStorage Productivity Center helps customers better understand how corporate information is being stored and managed and how well the storage infrastructure is performing against service levels. The software now offers a comprehensive view of the location of data so that customers can perform data migration and consolidation projects aimed at maximizing utilization of storage assets. For example, an online retailer offering a holiday special is faced with thousands of shoppers simultaneously submitting orders. IBM's new software offers a reporting feature that provides an automatic alert to advise the IT administrator on capacity levels, data location and performance across the entire storage environment so that adjustments can be made based on this spike in demand. Organizations can also set threshold limits that automatically trigger self-healing technology to extend capacity as demand fluctuates with changing business conditions. IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center can help simplify and automate the management of a wide variety of IBM storage devices – from disk systems to SAN Volume Controller, virtualization software that enables a tiered storage environment to allow customers to match the cost of the storage to the value of data – as well as a multitude of non-IBM storage devices. It can help businesses automate capacity provisioning, perform device configuration, tune and proactively manage the performance of storage devices on the SAN and manage, monitor and control SAN fabric. “Managing a diverse storage environment is becoming a universal headache for customers – one that is increasingly based on customers’ ability to meet service levels for business operations,” according to Jamie Gruener, storage market manager, IBM Tivoli. “IBM’s new software helps customers trim the complexity of storage management by giving them control over where and how their corporate information is stored based on its value and the ability to predict performance issues before they happen, adding intelligence to data management and retention practices.” IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center incorporates the Storage Networking Industry Association’s (SNIA) Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S), which provides interoperable storage management interfaces for storage hardware technologies. IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center V3.1, available now, is sold through IBM and IBM business partners. TotalStorage Productivity Center for Data, TotalStorage Productivity Center for Fabric and TotalStorage Productivity Center for Disk can be purchased separately or packaged as TotalStorage Productivity Center Standard Edition. TotalStorage Productivity Center Limited Edition, also announced today, is a limited capacity management version available with IBM TotalStorage DS platforms, SAN Volume Controller and IBM TotalStorage 3584 Tape Libraries. For additional information on this product, please visit its Web site.