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Storability Signs Sun, Releases Gloabal Storage Manager V3.2

Storability Software, a leader in storage management solutions, has announced the general availability of a significantly enhanced version of its Global Storage Manager and a new reseller agreement with Sun Microsystems Inc. Sun joins a growing number of storage industry leaders who are complementing their own offerings with Global Storage Manager to provide customers with a comprehensive solution for managing heterogeneous storage infrastructures.

New features of Storability Software's Global Storage Manager include a unified interactive management application that provides a single point of access for monitoring and controlling all aspects of the storage environment and key extensions for supporting a wider spectrum of enterprise applications and storage platforms. These new capabilities enable end-to-end visibility, management and control of storage resources associated with key applications such as Oracle, as well as important assets such as direct-attached storage, network-attached storage (NAS), SAN-attached storage and backup environments. By simplifying and streamlining the management of complex enterprise storage, Global Storage Manager helps organizations increase storage ROI through more efficient use of storage resources and personnel, and reduce capital expenditures by maximizing existing storage assets and deferring or eliminating purchases of additional equipment.

With this announcement, Storability Software continues to set new standards in the storage management market by providing enterprise customers with the most comprehensive management capabilities, platform and application support in the industry. Global Storage Manager is the first solution that is designed to work with all the diverse hardware and software components found in complex storage infrastructures today, while providing a centralized point of interactive management and control for the entire environment. Storability Software also ensures standards compliance by endorsing the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Common Information Model (CIM). Global Storage Manager is CIM compatible today and will further leverage the CIM standard as it becomes more readily adopted over time.

"With this release of Global Storage Manager, Storability Software is taking the next major leap forward in simplifying storage management," said Tim Leisman, Storability Software CEO. "Enterprises now have a comprehensive, proven solution that effectively manages multi-vendor, multi-site storage and scales to meet the needs of the largest global organizations. Adding Sun Microsystems to our growing reseller community sends a strong signal to Global 2000 CIOs that GSM meets Sun's high standards and can handle the rigorous demands of any enterprise data center. This important formalization of the relationship between Storability Software and Sun will enable us to build upon the strong success we have been experiencing in our work together on enterprise customer engagements."

Customer-Tested and Approved

Global Storage Manager's new capabilities have been installed and aggressively tested for months in major financial, pharmaceutical and insurance companies with outstanding results. In every case, the product has significantly improved the way companies manage their multi-vendor, multi-site storage resources. Storability Software's rapid implementation capability has been put to the test and met with immediate customer approval. Depending on the size of an environment, Storability Software's Global Storage Manager can be installed and running in less than two days.

Industry leader Sun Microsystems joining Storability Software's growing list of business partners further validates the unique capabilities of Global Storage Manager. By providing the levels of scalability, security and quality that Sun Microsystems demands in a product, Global Storage Manager is helping Sun deliver the comprehensive heterogeneous solutions that their enterprise customers require. With this partnership, Storability Software greatly expands its market and customer reach with the ability to leverage Sun Microsystems' established position in the Global 2000.

End-to-End Visibility of Entire Storage Infrastructure

This announcement provides storage management support for database applications, including Oracle, Sybase and SQL; network-attached storage (NAS) including Network Appliance; and direct-attach storage support including embedded or external SCSI or Fibre-Channel disk.

With this newly expanded platform and application support, Global Storage Manager significantly extends its breadth of platform and application coverage. It is the only storage management solution available today that provides CIOs and IT Managers with a single, centralized, end-to-end correlated view into their entire environment, from applications to direct-attached storage, NAS, SAN-attached storage, secondary storage and archive backup systems.

"IT organizations require solutions that help simplify the management of complex storage infrastructures and deliver value to internal customers," said Raymond Paquet, vice president and research director, Gartner Inc. "Significant cost savings can be achieved through software solutions that centralize control and efficiently manage storage and the relationships between applications and storage."

Increased Efficiency with Interactive Management

To help customers meet their business objectives to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency, Global Storage Manager includes a new unified interactive management application that simplifies day-to-day management and enables each administrator to efficiently manage large distributed storage environments. This new application, the Global Storage Administration Console, increases storage administrator productivity and reduces the need for training on multiple management tools. It also enables rapid problem analysis and repair, making storage administrators more efficient by consolidating all their tools in one place.

The Global Storage Administration Console serves as a centralized point of interactive management and control for the entire storage environment. Detailed real-time information about storage configuration, backup activity, capacity allocation and utilization, performance and operations are consolidated into a single, easy-to-use interface for storage administrators. The console delivers true real-time access to vital operation and performance data unlike other products that just poll for data periodically, which often results in the most current changes not being reflected in reports.

"Global Storage Manager's application-centric approach to managing enterprise storage infrastructures is superior in the marketplace today," said Dennis Martin, senior analyst, The Evaluator Group. "Administrators have real-time visibility into storage resources that are associated with the systems and applications they've deployed and can measure how they are being consumed."

Other key features of the Global Storage Administration Console include:

• Customized views which allow the administrator to create a wide range of custom reports according to job, responsibility or organization
• Threshold monitoring for any data element, with alerts indicating that action needs to be taken when the threshold is exceeded
• The ability to launch vendor administration tools, including device management tools and utilities such as SSH, directly from the single console
• Real-time topology maps that provide a graphical depiction of the enterprise-wide storage environment.

Availability

These new features are included with Global Storage Manager Version 3.2, which is shipping and available today.

About Storability Software

Storability Software is a leading provider of storage management solutions that simplify and centralize the management of complex, multi-site, multi-vendor storage infrastructures. Storability Software's Global Storage Manager software enables customers to comprehend, control and capitalize on their storage investment as never before. Customers benefit from increased asset utilization, improved management efficiency, enhanced quality of service and higher availability. For more information, please visit www.storability.com/, email info@storability.com, or call 866-STRGMGT (Outside the U.S. call 508-229-1700).

Contact: Asim Zaheer of Storability Software, 508-229-5710, asim.zaheer@storability.com.