TeraCloud Climbs Down The Storage-Management MountainTeraCloud Climbs Down The Storage-Management Mountain

While many software vendors try to make the climb from client support to mainframe and Unix system storage, TeraCloud Corp. is able to make the reverse commute.

TeraCloud on Monday will unveil management support for network-attached storage appliances. Right off the top, this will help customers make efficient use of existing NAS systems instead of wasting money on more devices. In the beginning, the software vendor is working with the big NAS box players--Auspex, EMC, and Network Appliance.

SpaceNet 3.0 could bring NAS users to places they haven't experienced before, as files have pranced across the IP network. With it, the customers could protect information from things like packet loss, move files between NAS appliances seamlessly, and increase application uptime.

Mike Karp, an analyst at Enterprise Management Associates, thinks TeraCloud stands out because of the reverse commute and its ability to combine a lot of functionality in the product. "These guys put it all into a single interface," he says, "including monitoring, root-cause analysis, hot spots, and utilization."