New IBM Bundle Lets Solution Providers Tackle Compliance

The IBM TotalStorage Data Retention 450 brings together off-the-shelf components currently available from IBM and allows solution providers the ability to offer a variety of value-adds, said Alan Stuart, IBM's chief strategist for compliance and data retention solutions.

The 450 is based on IBM's pSeries servers, FAStT storage arrays and Tivoli Storage Manager for Data Retention. The software includes the ability to configure data-retention policies that can be triggered by specific events. It can also hold a delete request if, for example, the customer is sued and needs to retain the data for longer than planned.

Because IBM is basing the 450 on products it already sells, solution providers can add other components, including optical drives and WORM tape drives for data that must be retained but which is seldom, if ever, accessed. The 450 can also be connected to primary storage arrays from multiple vendors under Solaris, AIX, Windows, HP-UX and z/OS, Stuart said.

IBM is offering five different configurations. The base configuration includes two p615 servers, each with one POWER 4++processor with active and passive clustering, a FAStT 600 array with 3.5 Tbytes of Serial ATA hard-drive storage and the software. This bundle costs about $141,600, or about $40 per Gbyte, Stuart said. Shipment is expected to start next month.

Solution providers said the bundle can help them work with customers to address compliance issues related to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, HIPAA and other government regulations.

TSG Server and Storage has been targeting health-care clients using Tivoli software for some time, said Joel Kaiser, account executive at the Edina, Minn.-based IBM solution provider.

Opportunities to sell relatively low-cost bundles in the medical regulatory space are growing, Kaiser said.

David Stone, executive vice president at Solutions-II, an IBM solution provider in Englewood, Colo., said the biggest benefit of the 450 is that IBM is delivering it as an appliance but allows solution providers to expand on it. "It's much simpler to have a system put together. And in this market, time is of the essence."