Legato Systems Inc yesterday stepped-up its campaign to capture the emerging market for centralized management of distributed tape storage subsystems, announcing a product roadmap that will see 22 products available by the end of they year for use with its GEMS global enterprise management of storage framework. Re- positioning Legato for the enterprise, is how the company views its 1997 activity. GEMS, which is due in May, uses a Java-based command and control center to administer collections of storage devices and incorporates Novadigm Inc’s network software distribution software and RedCape Software Inc’s Policy Manager. Legato reckons that users create more than one billion new files are every day, and that 80% of new applications are developed for use across distributed systems. Legato announced GEMS last November specifically to address this requirement. The 22 products, new and existing, home-grown and OEMed, are designed to work with new 5.x releases of the company’s core NetWorker storage management software due in July on Unix and Windows NT which Legato says works more quickly than previous versions and has been integrated with GEMS. Legato envisages individual NetWorker servers – which could be mixed Unix, NT or NetWare environment – managing collections of desktop and server tape storage devices, storing details of information – or metadata – about the data, and controlling the data protection processes which run within what Legato describes as each local data zones. Groups of discrete data zones will be collectively managed by Java applets executed from a browser-based GEMS control station. Legato says its use of multiple metadata stores is more secure than rivals such as OpenVision Inc which keep information about storage in one place. If one node goes down, an OpenVision data store is immediately thrown out of synch, while updating multiple local stores enables customers to continue operations as well as rebuild a data set using information from another store in the event of a failure. Legato says GEMS 1.0 also enables organizations to define common, enterprise-wide storage management policies; enables applications to share different storage media; and provides a mechanism for distributing storage management software and upgrades.
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Legato has a slew of partners which will offer GEMS on Unix and NT. GEMS also includes SunSoft Inc’s Java management APIs; Silicon Graphics Inc’s OpenVault media manager; MTI’s remote library manager which is due as RLM for NetWorker in the third quarter; and HighGround Systems Inc’s NT-based storage resource management applications and an interface to its NT Changer Media Services APIs which Microsoft is embedding in NT. Legato says it shipped more NT units in the last two quarter than Unix products. GEMS 2.0 software will include support for a variety of clustering mechanisms including Microsoft Wolfpack and Sun Full Moon – its already supports IBM Corp’s HACMP – plus failover, remote busing and additional network enhancements. Market- watchers at the Meta Group say that only a handful of companies, including Legato, OpenVision and Seagate Software are currently delivering enterprise storage monitoring with backup event and alerting applications. However, even these have yet to provide comprehensive support for fully-centralized management of distributed storage servers including synchronous propagation of backup schedule changes and tape rotation schemes. It’s mainly because of inconsistencies in cross-platform code and feature and function requirements, Meta notes. It expects this will delay the delivery of robust distributed control capabilities until the 1998/99 timeframe. In its opinion, Legato has an advantage over competitors because of its more consistent code base. Legato BusinessSuite Modules for SAP on Oracle on Unix, Oracle (2.0), Microsoft Exchange (1.0), Microsoft SQL Server (1.0), Informix (1.1), Power Edition for Solaris, and Open File Manager are available no. NetWorker for NT 4.4, GEMS 1.0, and Oracle on NT modules are due in Ma
y. SAP on Oracle for NT is due in June and NetWorker 5.0 for Unix is expected in July. September sees the release of NetWorker 4.12 for NetWare and a module for Sybase. Power Editions for HP-UX and NT, Harbor Agent and RLM for NetWorker are expected in the third quarter. NetWorker 5.x for NT, HSM for NetWorker for NT and the HighGround extensions are all due by year-end. A host of tape drive vendors have endorsed GEMS. The market seemed unimpressed with all of Legato’s noise, marking the stock down $1.25 at $16.25 on the day. Legato was trading at $48.00 last October.
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