IBM Announces New Seascape Storage Technologies to Manage and Share Information
Next-generation storage helps companies reduce overall storage costs and improve business efficiencies
SAN JOSE, CA (June 01, 1998) – IBM today announced the next major wave in enterprise storage based on IBM Seascape*^ Storage Enterprise Architecture. The powerful new hardware and software storage solutions will enable companies to transform the way they manage and share information throughout their organizations.
With businesses becoming more reliant on data-driven applications like e-business and business intelligence to maintain a competitive edge, they must have reliable and ready access to stored information. Today’s new IBM solutions incorporate a range of technologies and storage designs that help reduce overall storage costs and improve business efficiencies for customers.
IBM Seascape solutions are designed around a common storage architecture. The architecture provides a blueprint enabling various elements of the storage infrastructure to work together creating a comprehensive enterprise-wide storage environment. Seascape solutions can help companies consolidate, centralize and connect storage resources, manage the entire storage enterprise from a single central location, contain storage costs and share data across their organizations.
The storage market is expected to represent an opportunity of more than $44 billion by 2002,++ according to projections from International Data Corporation and Dataquest, leading market research firms.
“More and more companies are realizing the strategic importance of managing their data by turning information from a static to a dynamic asset,” said Dr. James Vanderslice, vice president and group executive, IBM Data Technology Group.+ “Instead of simply storing data, companies need to move information, share it, manage and secure it. We believe our Seascape blueprint is the most complete — and compelling — portrait of the storage environment of the future. Today’s announcements show the power of Seascape solutions to meet the needs for next-generation information management.”
Today’s new storage solutions are designed to deliver the requirements needed for data-intensive applications in a connected world. They include:
IBM StorWatch*, a family of enterprise storage resource management software products integrated with storage hardware. The StorWatch family is designed so that one person can manage storage resources centrally from anywhere in the global enterprise using a standard web browser;
IBM Versatile Storage Server*, a centralized, shared disk storage solution to support multiple UNIX,** Windows NT** and IBM AS/400* servers. It is designed to consolidate, share and centrally manage storage across mixed-server environments; and
the IBM enhanced Virtual Tape Server, designed to optimize tape storage resources, significantly improve performance and lower the total cost of ownership. Also announced are plans to expand this cost-effective tape storage solution for S/390* Parallel Enterprise servers to also include non-S/390 UNIX servers, for greater enterprise use of the storage solution.
IBM also announced it will introduce products that implement fibre channel technology for connecting servers with storage systems. IBM outlined its vision for Storage Area Networks (SANs), networks optimized for, and dedicated to, storage traffic.
One customer already riding the Seascape wave is Royal Caribbean International Cruise Lines.
“Royal Caribbean International is constantly looking for ways to enrich the vacation experience for each of the guests on our ships,” said Ron Sieman, vice president of Royal Caribbean’s Information Technology Department. “Using IBM’s Seascape storage technologies, we will be better able to determine what our more than two million guests each year want from onboard activities and port-of-call visits so that their preferences are built into our new ships.”
Source: IBM