HOPKINTON, MA -- EMC Corporation today announced a significant achievement in the continued delivery of its AutoIS (Automated Information Storage) strategy with release of a major new version of the widely popular EMC ESN Manager software, bringing the power of EMC's networked storage management software to both EMC and non-EMC storage environments alike. Leveraging EMC's industry first WideSky(TM) storage management middleware, ESN Manager is an important element of the AutoIS strategy and provides automation, simplification and openness for multi-vendor Storage Area Networks (SANs). Jim Rothnie, EMC Chief Technology Officer, said, ``The rapid surge of networked storage environments is confronting customers with multiple applications running on multiple storage devices being managed by multiple software tools. As a result, these environments have become breeding grounds for complexity and inefficiency. ESN Manager solves this problem with a single, intuitive and automated software management solution -- allowing customers to realize the cost savings and productivity-enhancing benefits that networked storage should deliver.'' Highlighted in today's announcement are ESN Manager support for: Compaq StorageWorks Arrays -- Enabling ESN Manager customers to discover, zone, and report on Compaq StorageWorks systems. EMC CLARiiON Storage Systems - Enabling customers to discover, zone, device mask and report on EMC CLARiiON enterprise storage systems. Single-view, Multi-vendor Switch Management - an industry-first ability to zone and manage multi-vendor switches - including those from Brocade, EMC and McData -- in the same fabric from a single software tool. ESN Manager also displays a single view of SAN performance and error-rate statistics across these devices in heterogeneous switch environments. In addition to the new capabilities mentioned above, ESN Manager continues to support discovery, zoning, device masking and reporting among other functions on EMC Symmetrix® storage systems, as well as support for hundreds of server-based storage resources and host bus adapters. EMC also previously qualified a wide range of non-EMC storage devices - including IBM ESS ``Shark'', Hewlett-Packard XP 512, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) Lightning 9900, and SUN StorEdge 9900 arrays and Storage Technology (STK) tape devices -- to coexist in mixed-vendor SANs managed by ESN Manager. This qualification ensures the side-by-side operation of these platforms in the same centrally managed SAN, and enables users to quickly and easily manage groups, or zones, of logically networked storage devices. Commenting on today's announcement, Randy Kerns of the Evaluator Group said: ``With the integration of additional third-party storage array support, it's clear EMC is committed to delivering on their promise of AutoIS. This is a very positive step for customers interested in centralizing the management of increasingly complex, multi-vendor fabric environments.''