IBMs Tivoli management software division will announce a significant storage software upgrade and a mass product consolidation effort on Monday, according to company officials.
The Austin, Texas division of IBM will upgrade Tivoli Storage Manager 4.2, which launched in July last year, to version 5.1, available April 12, said Brenda Zawatski, vice president of storage management software. TSM 5.1 features faster backup and restore speeds, without having to stop applications in many cases, she said. Support for Hewlett-Packard Co.s hardware and server-free backup are also new, with other platform support options coming in early October.
Also, TSM pricing will be simplified. Today, “you literally need a Ph.D. to figure it out,” but its changing to a per-processor and per-client model, Zawatski said.
The specific prices will be available next week, a Tivoli spokeswoman said.
Meanwhile, consolidation efforts are under way across Tivolis entire software line–for storage and everything else–from 89 products down to 33, according to Zawatski. Many products will be bundled together to accomplish that, and some will be sold inside IBM hardware directly, she said.
“I think [storage] hardwares moving toward commoditization, absolutely, and the values moving toward software… Youll see Tivoli go more on the offensive,” she said.
Tivoli and parent IBM are integrated now more than ever before, she said. Technology like storage resource management, alluded to in a speech at a recent industry trade show by Linda Sanford, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Storage Systems Group, could launch later this year as Tivoli software, industry watchers suggest.