MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., VERITAS Software Corporation today announced the next generation of VERITAS SANPoint Control(TM), the first product to unify the management of direct-attached storage (DAS), storage area networks (SANs), and the storage infrastructure for business-critical applications such as Oracle and Microsoft Exchange. The increased scope and interoperability of VERITAS SANPoint Control, an integral part of the VERITAS Adaptive Software Architecture(TM), allows companies to more easily view and manage their entire storage infrastructure from a single console. This reduces the complexity of managing multi-vendor, multi-platform storage environments. "CIOs and IT departments need to ensure the performance and availability of mission-critical applications, but at the same time are dealing with highly complex storage infrastructures," said Bob Passmore, Research Director, Storage, Gartner. "As companies look to reduce the growing costs of managing exploding storage environments, centralized solutions are needed to help companies better view and manage all of their storage, not just a portion of it." VERITAS SANPoint Control ensures the high performance and availability of critical business information by providing a comprehensive visualization of the entire storage infrastructure, from the application through to the storage device. This application-aware viewpoint of storage resources helps companies identify and proactively eliminate potential network and storage bottlenecks. In addition, VERITAS SANPoint Control offers improved policy-based automation that allows companies to more easily and proactively manage storage capacity. This automation reduces storage management costs while increasing the availability of business applications that depend on storage resources. To help companies set more intelligent policies to manage storage resources, the new VERITAS SANPoint Control also provides enhanced reporting capability, generating comprehensive, customizable reports to measure storage utilization, network performance and storage capacity. "With the expansion of OpenTV's data centers, our IT team was faced with the challenge of managing more storage capacity with the same resources," said Marcus Johnston, Worldwide Director of IT, OpenTV. "By automating storage management tasks, such as provisioning storage through VERITAS SANPoint Control, we are now able to more efficiently meet the increasing demands of the business. SANPoint Control not only works across a wide variety of hardware devices, but also integrates with VERITAS Foundation Suite and VERITAS Cluster Server to provide a software platform for our storage management needs." VERITAS SANPoint Control now offers the ability to discover and visualize VERITAS Software's industry-leading data protection, high availability and storage management software. The integration of these products with VERITAS SANPoint Control enables companies to architect their storage infrastructure based on the VERITAS Adaptive Software Architecture. This flexible, software-centric model is designed to reduce storage management complexities and to help companies optimize their storage resources. "On the strength of VERITAS SANPoint Control, VERITAS Software has been recognized as a leader in Gartner's SAN Management quadrant two years in a row*," said Mark Bregman, executive vice president, product operations, VERITAS Software. "With its rich new set of capabilities and integration with the VERITAS Adaptive Software Architecture, VERITAS SANPoint Control will help companies reduce the total cost of managing their storage environments, while ensuring that critical company information is always available. " To help companies design a storage networking environment that meets their business objectives, VERITAS Enterprise Consulting Services offers SAN assessment, design and implementation. These services include a new practice that helps organizations provision their storage more efficiently using VERITAS SANPoint Control. Pricing and Availability VERITAS SANPoint Control 3.5 is available immediately. Pricing begins at $20,000.