StorageTek, the leading tape automation vendor, and Veritas Software, the leading provider of end-to-end storage management software, have announced an alliance that aims to revolutionise the way Unix and Windows NT customers manage their open-systems tape storage. With wide support from application vendors and independent hardware vendors (IHVs), StorageTek and Veritas will drive an industry standard for open media and tape management.
"The tape library market has been limited by inefficiencies in tape library management," says Perry Harris, director of management strategies, Yankee Group. "StorageTek and Veritas are taking on current tape library management problems so customers can better manage their tape storage and get the most out of their investment."
Library and tape drives are dedicated to single applications, with no way to share library resources across platforms or multiple applications, such as backup/restore and hierarchical storage management (HSM). Tape library customers also have no way to manage tape libraries centrally. These limitations have impeded the expanded use of tape storage for different storage management applications. As a result, customers have poor utilisation of library resources and high costs of ownership. Moreover, data-intensive environments are growing rapidly, compounding the need for a standard solution that will allow more efficient management of tape resources.
"The storage industry is being revolutionised by the emergence of open technology, SANs, and widespread use of data intensive applications," says Sylvia Summers, VP and GM for StorageTek`s Multiplatform Business Group. "Our alliance with Veritas solves a major manageability and cost of ownership issue in Unix and NT environments. The open standard StorageTek and Veritas will drive with the help of ISVs and IHVs will work with any server, any operating system, application and tape library to manage information assets in the exploding heterogeneous enterprise."
Under the terms of the agreement, StorageTek and Veritas will jointly develop a standard library management technology. This will act as a robust interface between tape libraries and servers running various storage management applications, enabling customers to maximise and share information across multiple applications and operating systems.
Through their existing alliances and leadership positions in the industry, StorageTek and Veritas have laid the groundwork for library vendors to productise the standard technology with strong ISV support. Veritas has signed OEM agreements with the industry`s tape library vendors for its Veritas Media Librarian (VML) and StorageTek has over 30 ISVs that write to its automated cartridge system (ACS) API. These combined market strengths enable the rest of the industry to adopt the standard with ease. StorageTek and Veritas also intend to support Microsoft1s Removable Storage Manager (RSM) API for Windows 2000.
The StorageTek/Veritas initiative also ensures that any ISV`s software can instantly take advantage of advanced library features without further specific software development. StorageTek and Veritas are collaborating with existing OEM partners, ISVs and library vendors to work through open standardisation and interoperability issues.
"StorageTek and Veritas have a shared vision for the way customers, ISVs and library vendors optimize their open system storage devices," says Peter Levine, senior VP OEM sales, mergers and acquisitions, Veritas. "Our combined strengths and collaboration will bring many benefits to our mutual customers, as well as help grow the usage of the tape libraries and introduce new tape applications."
The first StorageTek products to result from this alliance of market leaders will ship this year.
StorageTek products are sold in South Africa by CMS, a company in the MGX Holdings group.
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