Veritas Spruces Up SRM

Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) is extending the quota and file-blocking capabilities of its StorageCentral software to handle Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows Storage Server 2003 and Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) filers (see Vendors Jump to Back Microsoft NAS and NetApp & Veritas Cuddle Up).

Veritas, which acquired the storage resource management (SRM) software with Precise earlier this year, will be announcing the availability of StorageCentral version 5.2 tomorrow (see Veritas Picks Up Precise).

The company claims the new software version offers enhanced quota and file management capabilities for both Windows and NetApp filers. A "light" version of the software has also been baked straight into the Windows Server 2003 and the Storage Server 2003 operating systems, according to Marty Ward, Veritass director of product marketing.

“This is very important for us,” he says. “This is a proof point of more integration with both Microsoft and NetApp. Our relationships have become much more mature.”

The new quota functions allow companies to set up capacity thresholds for users on shared disk environments, and offers reporting capabilities warning users when they’re approaching their limit.As for the new file management capabilities, Ward says that they help administrators block specific incoming files, like MP3, video, and audio files. The software can also block files that are inappropriate for a corporate network. “A lot of companies don’t want to be liable for documents coming into their system,” he says.

The StorageCentral software is a part of Veritas’s so-called utility computing strategy, which aims to enforce cost accountability for storage use, thus optimizing storage utilization and allowing companies to manage their storage as they do any other utility (see Veritas Moves up the Stack). Other products included in this strategy are Veritas SANPoint Control, which enables centralized, policy-based storage management, and Veritas Storage Reporter, which provides analysis of storage usage across heterogeneous environments, thus helping predict future storage needs.

The new software version will bring Veritas one step closer to reaching its goal of integrating the software it recently acquired both with Precise and Jereva with its existing software products. “There’s a whole slew of integration opportunities with the products,” Ward says. “Our SRM suite is going to become more and more integrated over time.”

But even as the acquired software products become more and more Veritas-ified, complete integration between Windows-focused StorageCentral and the company’s homemade, heterogeneous SRM software, SANPoint Control, look as if they'll remain separate products for a while longer.

In any case, Ward isn’t worried about traction. The company already has more than 1,000 customers for previous versions of StorageCentral, and he expects the new version will quickly gain customers. “We’ll have some people buying it immediately,” he says.The new StorageCentral 5.2 software is available now, with pricing starting at $1,395 per server. The software is also available in an Active Directory edition, for $1,950 per server, and in a NetApp Edition, for $2,200 per server.

Veritas will also announce tomorrow that it is increasing the number of companies reselling its SRM software. Until recently, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company only sold its StorageCentral software directly to customers. Recently, CDW and Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL) agreed to start reselling the software, and tomorrow the company will add more than 3,000 other companies to its list of resellers.

— Eugénie Larson, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch