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iWave Raises The Flag For Storage Automation: Page 3 of 5

  • That need arose at least twice in the past couple of years as iWave acquired Newmerix in June 2009 and Enigmatec in April 2010. Now, iWave cannot be considered a software startup, as it was founded in 1993 and has what would seem to be a solid customer base that includes OEMs. (iWave can publicly acknowledge only Unisys.)

    Still, small companies tend to stick to their own knitting and not worry about acquisitions. But companies that can make acquisitions that integrate in a complementary manner can move forward faster without having to reinvent the software wheel.

    This point explains iWave’s ability to start off with a base of data center orchestration and first extend to cloud service management before adding storage automation to its evolutionary mix. In point of fact, the company’s storage automation is powered by iWave Orchestrator, which uses iWave accelerators. These accelerators provide workflow and adapters, which is software that enables bi-directional communications with endpoint applications.

    Now, the technological and commercial drivers for storage automation are well known. The projected continued huge growth in the need for storage accompanied by the fact that IT operating budgets are not growing commensurately leads the charge for increased storage efficiency or "doing more with less." Central to that is that storage administrator skills are in short supply and not likely to increase sufficiently under business-as-usual conditions. To top it off, as cloud computing takes off, storage will be a necessary part of that process and storage as a service will be a large part of the overall IT-as-a-service cloud endgame.

    iWave has introduced the iWave Storage Director as its means to provide automated enterprise storage. That includes benefits such as cutting down provisioning time of storage from days to minutes, discovering and reclaiming unused storage, and enabling storage administrators to use more of their time on higher-value-added activities than simply doing routine tasks that had to be done and done right, but can now be automated.