A New Vendor Could Bring Storage Customers HopeA New Vendor Could Bring Storage Customers Hope

Most IT execs know how much storage capacity they oversee. But few can guarantee the CEO that every byte of that disk farm is used efficiently. More likely, a percentage of the capacity sits unused. And although Computer Associates, Sun Microsystems, and Veritas are among the vendors trying to address storage-resource management, few are meeting the need, in buyers' eyes.

"There are enough SRM companies out there but not enough SRM answers out there," says Ray Paquet, an industry analyst at Gartner. "There isn't an outstanding SRM product yet."

Monday, startup AppIQ will try to seize the opportunity. AppIQ's Solution Suite, with support for Oracle and Microsoft Exchange, is based on the Common Information Model standard for managing multivendor storage networks. AppIQ, which says it has software in beta tests, is working with other storage-network vendors to make them CIM-compliant.

Paquet says another storage-resource management vendor, StorScape Inc., is the only other CIM-compliant vendor so far. "With CIM, vendors can write code to multiple products in a standard way," he says. "But it doesn't mean better products." He says he expects to see CIM-compliant storage-resource management products in the market around the middle of next year.