An acquisition by Veritas Software Corp. in November adds to the consolidation in the storage resource management (SRM) market. Veritas bought NTP Software Inc. technology to supplement the package it sells to help monitor and manage storage networks.
Veritas will integrate NTP’s Storage Reporter storage usage trend and projection package into Veritas’ SANPoint Control in the next six months to improve its file system scanning, trend analysis and capacity usage capabilities. The company also will integrate Storage Reporter with its Volume Manager, File System and NetBackup, as well as other Veritas products, over the next 12 to 18 months.
“Veritas continues to enhance our SAN management tools for all markets including financial institutions and hospitals across Canada,” comments Fred Dimson, general manager of Veritas Corp. Canada. “The addition of the NTP technology to SANPoint Control demonstrates our commitment to enhancing the capabilities of Veritas technology and lowering costs for our customers.”
The acquisition is Veritas’ second in the SRM market. In 1998, the company acquired Windward Technologies Inc. and integrated its predictive-failure analysis tools into its storage management products.
The acquisition of NTP’s reporting utility comes at a time when SRM companies are being snapped up by large systems manufacturers, such as EMC Corp. and IBM Corp. Sun Microsystems Inc. started the consolidation of the SRM market in April 2001 with the acquisition of start-up HighGround’s software. IBM Tivoli and EMC purchased SRM companies in September of this year: Tivoli bought Trellisoft, and EMC took over Prisa Networks this year and acquired SoftWorks in 1999.
Other companies have benefited to a lesser degree from the acquisition of SRM companies – Hewlett-Packard, McData, Computer Associates and Fujitsu-Softek have each picked up a variety of SRM start-ups.
“You are going to see further consolidation because the SRM market isn’t a business, it’s a feature – that function will roll up into higher-level software products like EMC’s ControlCenter or CA or BMC,” says Steve Duplessie, senior analyst with Enterprise Storage Group.
Analysts also say consolidation is beneficial to customers because those customers now will be able to purchase SRM along with other storage capabilities from the same vendor.
“It’s a trade-off between a single vendor and several vendors with different capabilities,” says James Gruener, senior analyst for The Yankee Group. “The challenge is choosing vendors that have a strong foundation but also have appropriate add-on products that offer customers additional value for the least amount of money.”
As far as consolidation goes, only a handful of independent SRM companies remain. Among them are Astrum Software, Teracloud, Tek-Tools and Intermine.
