CA Responsive On Storage ManagementCA Responsive On Storage Management

Computer Associates on Monday unveiled storage-management software designed to help customers keep costs in line.

The CA BrightStor r11.1 suite includes 13 integrated products that will support multiple types of storage products, databases, and apps. The vendor hopes to undercut the management costs of offerings of primary competitors EMC Corp. and Veritas Software Corp.

Enhancements include the ability to align different types of data with appropriate media to support business goals. Together, the new modules could help customers gain a common view across mainframe and open-systems-based data. New backup and recovery software could let customers manage those operations and improve the success rate. New resource-management capabilities should help customers back up data based on business value and cut down on capital hardware costs by getting optimum efficiency from the existing storage network.

An industry analyst thinks the true integration of 13 products could lead to aggressive pricing and a more responsive CA. "CA is really starting to cook on a couple of things," says Mike Karp, an analyst at Enterprise Management Associates. "Before, each tool was good, but separate, and now common services lying underneath each make it real integration."