Features - Storage Innovations:

CROSSWALK UNVEILS STORAGE APPLICATION FOR MEDIUM-SIZED BUSINESS

Crosswalk recently issued a challenge to the storage industry's "one-sizefits -all" approach to storage management, with the launch of the first storage management software package targeted to meet the needs of mid-market customers. Available now, Crosswalk Storage Manager delivers a simple, powerful way to visualize and manage the entire storage environment. The application enables organizations with five to 200 servers to improve application performance and boost the efficiency of their storage operations, without the expense of investing in a dedicated storage expert. As a result, IT administrators of medium-sized companies, value-added resellers and systems integrators are embracing the solution as the first package to recognize that the needs of a mid-market storage environment are different from those of enterprise environments.

McDATA founder Jack McDonnell has created Crosswalk to solve the storage problems of mid-sized businesses, launching Crosswalk Storage Manager as the first of a series of storage solutions targeted at this underserved sector of the storage market. Until now, IT directors in medium-sized businesses have had to choose between two unsatisfactory options: either accept the timeconsuming inaccuracies of a manual approach, or contend with the complexity and high cost of an enterprise-focused solution. As a result, medium-sized businesses running common applications like Microsoft Exchange, Oracle databases, Microsoft SQL Server, Veritas NetBackup and Legato Networker struggle to maintain data availability and to keep these systems running smoothly.

"Crosswalk is the first storage vendor to acknowledge that medium-sized companies need an easier, more cost effective way to deliver a unified view of the storage environment," said Allan Munsie, IT director for Michigan's St. Clair County Community Mental Health Authority. "Using Crosswalk Storage Manager, we've been able to monitor our systems more carefully and identify potential problems before they occur. We anticipate that the solution will dramatically enhance our storage and application performance, while at the same time giving us the freedom to redirect IT resources to other projects."

Crosswalk chairman and CEO McDonnell said the company has received an overwhelming response from both its beta customers and VARs, indicating that market opportunities for Crosswalk Storage Manager are strong.

"Demand has already exceeded our expectations," McDonnell said. "Medium-sized businesses tell us that they felt trapped until now: they can't afford to employ storage experts or to run complicated, enterprise-targeted solutions. As the environment grows, manual management methods are just too cumbersome and unreliable. Based on the positive feedback from our early adopters, we anticipate that Crosswalk will quickly gain traction in the market because we offer a simple way for the average IT manager to increase efficiency, reduce operational and capital costs, and maximize application availability."

Crosswalk Storage Manager: Building On The Flexibility Of CIM And Open Standards

Crosswalk Storage Manager is the only solution of its kind to be completely built on common information model (CIM) standards, with full support for legacy and existing management interfaces, such as the simple network management protocol (SNMP). Crosswalk Storage Manager takes an integrated approach to storage management by uniting both physical and logical resources from different vendors into a single CIM-based knowledge-base. This approach simplifies management, makes applications open and extensible, and gives IT generalists the power to manage, access and store their organization's critical data without developing storage specialist skills in-house.

"When it comes to storage, medium-sized businesses have very specific requirements in terms of price point, heterogeneity, functionality, simplicity and scalability," explained Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group senior partner. "Crosswalk Storage Manager addresses these issues to provide a useful solution for the middle segment of the storage industry."

Crosswalk Storage Manager installs in less than an hour and includes three modular components:

• Crosswalk Knowledge Server, the heart of Crosswalk Storage Manager, dramatically simplifies storage management by aggregating both physical and logical resource data into a single knowledge-base. The CIM-built, open architecture of the Knowledge Server allows a network administrator or systems integrator to automatically gather, visualize, and store essential information, which can then be used for assessing, planning, architecting, procuring and managing mid-sized storage infrastructures.

• Crosswalk Resource Manager offers detailed application monitoring and reporting. Designed to give IT managers the real-time information they need for more effective capacity planning and event management, Crosswalk Resource Manager generates server, application, and device-specific reports for networked attached storage (NAS), direct attached storage (DAS) and storage area networking (SAN) environments. This optional component supports Microsoft SQL and Oracle databases, and Microsoft Exchange email systems, and offers backup reporting capabilities for Veritas NetBackup and Backup Exec, Computer Associates ARCserve, Legato Networker, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and SyncSort Backup Express.

• Crosswalk SAN Manager is an optional package for environments that have a SAN or are evaluating whether to move to a SAN. Crosswalk SAN Manager automatically discovers and maps the storage network to enable the IT manager to monitor and visualize all SAN connected assets, including HBAs, switches, gateways, storage arrays, and tape devices, regardless of manufacturer. This component delivers regular notifications of SAN health, removing the guesswork from SAN management. A Crosswalk SAN Performance Manager component is available for real-time and historical throughput and threshold information.