IBM Reorganizes Storage Systems Group, Gives Software Equal Footing

IBM

The move unifies IBM's development efforts in storage virtualization and its StorageTank architecture under Michael Zisman, who this week was appointed general manager for the Storage Software organization.

Also under Zisman is development related to common APIs. However, development of Tivoli Storage Manager, the company's flagship storage software application, remains with the Tivoli organization, an IBM spokesperson said.

StorageTank is IBM's platform for eventually unifying the management of heterogeneous storage environments under a single interface. It is currently in beta, and initial rollouts are expected during the first half of 2002, the spokesperson said.

The Storage Software organization is the newest part of the Storage Systems Group. The group also includes the company's Storage Networking organization, which focuses on NAS and IP-based products, and the Storage Products organization, which includes the Shark and FAStT disk storage arrays and tape arrays. The heads of the three organizations all report directly to Linda Sanford, senior vice president and group executive of the Storage Systems Group.

For the past year, Zisman has been working with IBM's StorageTank and virtualization software development teams. He was CEO of Lotus in 1995 and 1996 before stepping down for family reasons.