CA`s BrightStor Storage Resource Manager wins coveted network computing well-connected award

Computer Associates International, Inc. today announced that BrightStor Storage Resource Manager (BrightStor SRM) r6.4 has won Network Computing magazine`s Well-Connected Award in storage resource management.

Cited as the most effective solution for small-to-medium business users, BrightStor SRM received the highest scores in integration, architecture and environment support and was singled out for demonstrating management experience and support for mandatory financial reporting. Twenty companies were invited to participate.

"It is always an honor to be recognized in a Network Computing review, since the publication has a well-established reputation for doing highly thorough and realistic evaluations," said Anders Lofgren, vice president of BrightStor storage management at CA. "We are particularly pleased to be honored in a study that evaluated product quality and the effectiveness with which the participating vendors tailored the implementation of their products to a specific set of real-world customer challenges."

The criteria for this year`s Well-Connected Awards included the technical characteristics of solutions and the respective vendors` overall management approach. Network Computing reviewers created a mock request-for-information (RFI) based on the needs of a typical small business, known as Minuteman.

Minuteman`s storage infrastructure contained a broad mix of platforms and topologies. With 30 TB of heterogeneous storage, primarily in direct-attached configurations, and a Fibre Channel SAN fabric that had reached its maximum node capacity, Minuteman`s management problems were multiplying. In addition, it had maxed out the node capacity on the SAN and some of its storage was shared within a server cluster.

CA`s proposal - which also included BrightStor SAN Designer and BrightStor Enterprise Backup - emphasized the importance of the fictional company`s business processes and mapped out policies for data access, protection and retention. Network Computing reviewers found that CA offered a "conservative and carefully reasoned" solution that provided the "flexibility, features and support" to satisfy the company`s requirements and was the only vendor to show "clear support" for all the platforms in the RFI.

"CA has a knowledge base of best practices that reflects its long tenure in enterprise management and a common services layer that provides a kind of glue between its BrightStor components and their management targets," editors said. "Moreover, storage management via BrightStor could well become a stepping stone for Minuteman into the bigger world of enterprise management - evolving from a utility storage solution to a utility computing solution.

"The Well-Connected Awards are the only industry awards given by technologists based on real-world product testing and evaluation," said Fritz Nelson, vice president and group publisher of Network Computing Enterprise Architecture Group. "This is an important distinction from any other award program. The products selected in the Well-Connected Awards are unique because they have been tested over an enterprise by our editors themselves. They are truly innovative solutions that work."