Quest Software has rolled out its new storage capacity management offering, Storage Horizon, which reportedly measures storage usage, assists with provisioning and purchasing decisions, and automates storage analysis and reporting.

The company said that this release marks its first entry into the storage resource management (SRM) market.

Storage Horizon, acquired through Quest’s purchase of MonoSphere’s technology assets earlier this year, reportedly enables storage administrators manage capacity and achieve higher utilisation levels than the industry average of 20 to 40%. Also, the new offering requires no installation of software agents, so the system deploys immediately and begins collecting storage usage data.

Tyler Jewell, senior director of Quest Software, said: “We believe Quest will become a significant player in the SRM market. Storage Horizon will be a requirement for all medium- to large-sized storage environments to help them understand true array usage, offer predictive analysis, and provide agent less data collection. Storage Horizon also will reduce the increasing cost of storage infrastructure, which is especially important in these tough economic times.”

Storage Horizon includes storage management reports and a management dashboard. According to the company, these graphical reports and dashboard views provide IT management with an understanding of the storage environment and show sources of inefficiencies to provide optimal use of the storage assets.

In addition, this release reportedly offers support for 3PAR InServ arrays, providing automated analysis, including developing optimised storage capacity plans; identifying dark storage that can be re-directed to areas needing additional capacity; pinpointing over-provisioned areas so wasted storage can be reclaimed; providing early warning of potential over-utilisation issues; and conducting analysis of the oversubscription impacts of thin provisioning.

Quest Storage Horizon 3.8 is available with North American pricing at $900 per terabyte of storage.