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In an effort to centralize and automate the management of heterogeneous storage environments, IBM announced Tuesday that it has pulled together technology from its Tivoli software and on-demand computing product lines and added a new device manager to offer a management suite called the TotalStorage Productivity Center.
The new Productivity Center is a GUI that links to Tivoli SRM, Tivoli Storage Manager, Tivoli SAN Manager and a new feature called the Multiple Device Manager. The suite was designed to provide centralized management of multiple hardware systems, error detection and analysis, and storage resource management (SRM) capabilities.
But the creation of the Productivity Center represents more than IBM's simply bringing existing products together under a new name. Anne MacFarland, director of enterprise architectures and solutions for the Clipper Group Inc., Wellesley, Mass., said, "This is more because of the orchestration and provisioning they bought with ThinkDynamics, and the automated data center workflows they are developing with partner initiatives."
IBM's Multiple Device Manager integrates functionality from Tivoli and ThinkDynamics. MacFarland said, "IBM's support for storage management standards and well-planned automation let the administrator manage an environment of heterogeneous assets by the bevy, not by the brand."
Said Jeff Barnett, manager of market strategy for IBM storage software: "The Productivity Center is not a software bundle. It's integrated. Together the tools bring more value than any of them would individually. The Productivity Center deals with hardware, storage network management and hardware configuration across heterogeneous environments, as well as performance and replication management."
Charles King, a research director with the Sageza Group Inc., in Mountain View, Calif., said, "What IBM is really doing here is helping customers take additional steps toward centrally monitoring, managing, and automating complex storage environments. It's an incremental process, not one that will be instantly solved with a 'Eureka!' style concept or technology."
The TotalStorage Productivity Center software suite will be available this May at a starting price of $5,000. The price tag depends on the amount of storage and the number of servers being managed.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
IBM unveils SAN File System
IBM reorganizes software group
IBM package aims to capitalize on compliance fears
Plugging the holes in Tivoli Storage Manager
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