Computer Associates sees future in storage

By ADAM GIFFORD

Computer Associates has reshaped and rebranded its storage management, backup and recovery products.

Unveiling the BrightStor range at CA World in Orlando, Florida, the company's chief executive, Sanjay Kumar, said storage was one of the fastest growing parts of the industry.

He said customers wanted end-to-end integrated management of their storage, which was increasingly being seen as a centralised pool whatever system it was on.

"You can't manage storage in just Unix or NT anymore, you have so many customers with Linux, System 390.

"We are the first vendor that can provide complete cross-platform views of storage."

The first product in the new range is the BrightStor Enterprise Backup, which incorporates Alexandria, CA's previous high-end storage offering, plus elements of its ARCServe range and Unicentre TNG Advanced Storage Option.

It is integrated with other products such as the EMC Timefinder and FastTrax software for backing up EMC storage, Network Appliance's Data Ontap and NetApp filers.

It also embraces Unix and Windows disaster recovery software and Microsoft Exchange and SQL backup. CA and EMC staff will work together selling the products.

Doculabs, an independent analytical firm, said BrightStor Enterprise Backup could do an online backup of a relational database on a Sun Solaris system at 1.5 terabytes an hour and on HP-UX at more than 1 terabyte and hour.

With companies increasingly needing 24-hour access to their data, those kinds of speeds are attractive to managers of big databases.

"Our clients typically have seven, eight, 10 systems that need backing up," said Dan Bagot of Trilliant, a specialist storage consulting firm.

"The more tools you use, the more complexity and the greater cost you create.

"As people move to shared systems, they are looking for centralised control tools."



He said market leader Veritas had enjoyed such robust growth in the enterprise storage area, particularly since the decline of rival Legato, that there was now room for another vendor to push in.

Veritas has called BrightStor "a big yawn," pointing to its share of the storage software market - 39.1 per cent against CA's 21.3 per cent.

CA also unveiled a modular version of its Unicenter enterprise management software, which it said would allow its customers to build on their existing investments, rather than be forced to take a big bang approach to technology.

* Adam Gifford attended CA World as a guest of Computer Associates