EMC Details ILM Plans

"EMC is about one thing right now," said Mark Lewis, executive vice president of open software at EMC, Hopkinton, Mass. "We want to help you get the most value from your information, and we want to do it with the lowest total cost."

Even so, Lewis tapped the brakes on the ILM hype by warning IT administrators at the EMC Technical Symposium in Orlando, Fla., that it will be a long time before anyone can buy what he called "ILM version 1.0."

Instead, Lewis said, ILM is made up of a lot of parts, many of which EMC picked up through its recent acquisitions of Legato, Documentum and VMware.

EMC's software road map calls for updates throughout the line that are focused on ILM.

For one, the company plans to launch next quarter version 5.2 of its ControlCenter storage and device resource management software, with improved ease-of-use and integrated service management features. Another version adding change management, workflow and Web services is planned for early next year.

In addition, EMC plans a point release later this year of its VisualSAN software for discovery, management and monitoring of SANs that will include Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) array support and expanded platform coverage, Lewis said.

EMC also plans to start beta testing next quarter a storage router that virtualizes data movement over storage switches from vendors including Cisco Systems, Brocade Communications and McData. The device will route data to the most appropriate location on the SAN without the host server being aware of where exactly it is, Lewis said.

Also on EMC's 2004 road map is Documentum version 5.3, which will support the Mandatory Access Control List (MACL) security standard, integrated e-mail archival support based on Legato technology, and an enhanced collaboration platform.

Documentum version 5.4, due by the second quarter of 2005, will add enhanced storage-aware content repository capabilities, next-generation content delivery services and enhanced full-text search support.

Joe Cunningham, general manager of Computer Professionals International, Albany, N.Y., said EMC seems to have the most complete ILM message of the major vendors.