Business Services Industry

Tivoli First with ANSI Compliant Industry Standard SAN Management Solution; Tivoli Storage Network Manager Removes Barriers to SAN Implementation With New Cross Industry Standards

Business Wire, Oct 30, 2000

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

Storage Networking World

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 30, 2000

Tivoli Systems said today it has the first storage area network (SAN) management solution to incorporate the newly defined American National Standards Institute (ANSI) T11 SAN discovery and management standards.

The Tivoli Storage Network Manager, available today, simplifies how information is managed across the multiple platforms and operating environments typical in a SAN and enables customers to use best-of-breed technology to gain competitive advantage. Customers are not locked into one platform or vendor, but can choose individual products that best suit their needs, with the assurance that Tivoli Storage Network Manager will interoperate with them all.

ANSI certifies voluntary consensus standards and conformity assessment systems across 175 industries, including technology. T11, a standards organization sanctioned by ANSI, has created the FC-MI (Fibre Channel -- Methodologies for Interconnects) profile to ensure interoperability and standardized discovery and management, when implementing fibre channel networks. Tivoli Storage Network Manager is the first available SAN management solution to incorporate the newly defined T11 fibre channel SAN discovery and management standards.

The lack of recognized industry standards, combined with the complexity of managing non-interoperable systems, has been a major deterrent to customer adoption of SANs. In a recent survey of IT professionals, industry research firm Enterprise Management Associates Inc. (EMA) found that 80% were delaying the purchase or deployment of SAN technology pending introduction of industry standard technology.

"Most of the customers we surveyed recognize the need for SANs, but have postponed their implementations while waiting for the introduction of standards compliant solutions," said Anne Skamarock, a senior analyst with EMA. "With the introduction of solutions such as Tivoli Storage Network Manager, which adhere to industry standards, customers have the assurance that management of their SAN will be consistent and reliable."

SAN vendors have united in their support of the ANSI T11 FC-MI profile in order to speed the adoption of SAN technology and to ensure interoperable, and fully discoverable and manageable SANs. Industry leaders such as Agilent, Brocade, Compaq, Crossroads, EMC, Emulex, Gadzoox, HP, IBM, LSI, McData, Pathlight, JNI, Q-Logic, Seagate, Sun Microsystems, StorageTek, Tivoli and Troika participated in the creation of the ANSI T11 FC-MI profile.

"Our customers have made it exceedingly clear that they want industry standard SAN solutions," said Rick Luttrall, director of product management, Crossroads Systems. "As a part of our drive to promote interoperability, Crossroads continues to work closely with Tivoli to ensure our customers have the storage solutions they need."

Policy-based automation and capacity-on-demand capabilities help customers insure availability of mission-critical applications thereby providing higher storage resource utilization for maximum benefit to the customer's storage investment. Tivoli Storage Network Manager is built upon a highly scalable architecture and the ANSI T11 FC-MI discovery and management profile, making it easy to grow with the business to deploy and manage a small SAN or a very large, complex SAN infrastructure.

About Tivoli Systems Inc.

Tivoli(R) software manages the foundations of e-business, extending the boundaries of traditional network and systems management from the data center across the Internet, from the desktop to pervasive devices. Leading companies around the world use Tivoli software, Tivoli Ready(tm) third-party products and Team Tivoli partner services to reduce the cost and complexity of managing heterogeneous IT environments. Tivoli solutions, encompassing management of security, storage and mobile devices, are helping these organizations to create a technology infrastructure to support the next generation of business. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Tivoli is an IBM company (NYSE:IBM). Tivoli distributes its products worldwide through a network of global sales offices, systems integrators, resellers and IBM sales channels. For more information, visit www.tivoli.com.

Tivoli, Tivoli Enterprise and Tivoli Ready are registered trademarks or trademarks of Tivoli Systems Inc., an IBM company. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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