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NetApp Signs Partnering Deals to Broaden Data Tools

Posted on: Tuesday, 23 December 2003, 06:00 CST

Adds hardware, looks for help on life-cycle software

Network Appliance Inc. last week announced partnerships with Cisco Systems Inc., Veritas Software Corp. and FileNet Corp. as part of a plan to offer integrated storage systems for information life- cycle management, regulatory compliance and disk-based data backup.

In addition, NetApp introduced several products, including two new file servers and an upgraded version of its NearStore disk array for secondary storage.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company also upgraded an appliance that provides network-attached storage (NAS) file-serving capabilities to storage-area networks (SAN), using disk arrays from other vendors for back-end storage (see box).

Regarding its partnerships, NetApp said it's qualifying its storage devices for use with Cisco's MDS 9000 family of multiprotocol SAN directors and switches. NetApp also plans to resell the switches and directors, starting with Cisco's MDS 9100 series fabric switches. Those devices will be available within 45 days, the company said.

To boost its bid to piece together a more complete set of tools for automatically controlling data throughout its entire life cycle, NetApp also will resell FileNet's content management software and Veritas' storage and data management products.

Carolyn DiCenzo, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said NetApp in June made a storage management application programming interface available for use by other vendors and is now trying to use the API to expand its sales.

The deal with FileNet lets NetApp offer FileNet's Image Manager, Content Manager and Records Manager applications. Meanwhile, NetApp will integrate Veritas' Data Life-cycle Manager and NetBackup software with its products.

According to NetApp officials, the addition of Data Life-cycle Manager will enable storage managers to do policy-based migration and archiving of data between NetApp's devices and a mix of servers. NetBackup will let users send backup copies of data on Microsoft Exchange servers and file systems running on Windows, Unix and Linux hosts to NearStore arrays, said Rich Boberg, NetApp's senior director of technology partnering.

"Sixty percent of our customer base uses Veritas for tape-based backup," Boberg said. "Having this as a seamless transition for them to go from tape to disk backup is a huge advantage for them."

Randy Kerns, an analyst at Evaluator Group Inc. in Greenwood Village, Colo., said the information life-cycle management plans pit NetApp against storage rival EMC Corp. in a new way. EMC has become a competitor to both Mountain View, Calif.-based Veritas and Costa Mesa, Calif-based FileNet through recent deals to acquire software vendors Legato Systems Inc. and Documentum Inc.

The alliances make sense from that standpoint, Kerns said. But he added that NetApp is "not planning on becoming a storage management software company. They're providing capabilities for the companies already in that space." * 43323

PRODUCT DETAILS

NetApp's New Storage Devices

FAS980: Supports both file- and block-level data and scales to 32TB of capacity, or 64TB in a clustered configuration.

GFILER: Enhanced version of file-server engine for integrating NAS and SAN capabilities, with new support for IBM's Shark disk arrays.

NEARSTORE R200: Ungraded secondary-storage disk array that scales to 96TB and works with enhanced data management software.

Copyright Computerworld Inc. Dec 8, 2003

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