CA Unleashes New Storage Products, Initiatives

The company Tuesday unveiled version 10 of its BrightStor ARCserve Backup application.

Among the new features of ARCserve 10 is an Advanced Application Disaster Recovery function, which automates the recovery of applications and data, company executives said. This function is initially available for Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server.

Also new is the ability to store a single instance of a multiple instance of an item, such as an attachment, under Microsoft Exchange Server, regardless of how many e-mails contain that item, the executives said.

ARCserve 10 is expected to be available for Windows platforms next quarter, with Linux and NetWare versions expected to be ready early next year.

id
unit-1659132512259
type
Sponsored post

Robert Davis, CA's divisional vice president for BrightStor, said that even though version 9 of ARCserve was released only last November, CA wanted to come out with version 10 quickly in order to help customers realize the value of their maintenance contracts.

Todd Huntley, president of SanServe, a Roseville, Minn.-based solution provider, said ARCserve 9 has been a great seller for his company. For instance, he said SanServe recently won a job, with a quote of $26,000, for ARCserve on 25 Windows servers, beating another supplier's quote of $98,000 for the same project using Veritas NetBackup.

However, Huntley said he is perplexed as to why CA would come out with a new version so quickly. "It's a stupid move for [CA]," he said. "ARCserve 9 is the best product they ever had."

CA also unveiled for its Premier channel partners two bundles that provide canned services solution providers can implement immediately, said Michael Natoli, vice president of channels for the company's BrightStor line.

The BrightStor Storage Assessment Pack includes BrightStor SAN Designer, for designing and documenting SAN environments; BrightStor Storage Resource Manager, for analyzing customers' current data environments; and on-site professional services for the bundle. Pricing starts at $7,500 for reports on 13 servers and documentation of one SAN environment.

The BrightStor SAN Life Cycle Management Starter pack includes one-year licenses for both the SAN Designer and the SAN Manager applications, as well as related professional services. Pricing starts at $15,000 for five Windows servers.

Both bundles are available immediately, Natoli said.

One solution provider said that while CA is a crucial storage partner, the company's two new bundles won't be helpful.

"A point of contention for us with CA is how badly overpriced [it] has been with its professional services," the solution provider said. "We have very talented [systems engineers] who can do very good storage services. But when CA comes in, it marks up its services 300 percent."

CA also used the exhibition to demonstrate new storage provisioning technology it expects to unveil next year, said Davis.

Central to the provisioning capability is version 6.3 of the company's BrightStor Storage Resource Manager application, which will be used to tie the company's data availability software, including ARCserve Backup, Enterprise Backup and Mobile Backup with its infrastructure management software, including SAN Designer and SAN Manager, Davis said.

The storage management applications, when tied in such a fashion, form a continuum from backing up the data to managing the infrastructure, and address key client issues such as whether data was properly backed up and if there is any problem with any storage devices, said Davis.

At CA World, the company also unveiled several new initiatives with Sony, including the integration of Sony's PetaSite storage systems with BrightStor Enterprise Backup, the bundling of BrightStor ARCserve technology with Sony's StorStation AIT WORM (write once, read many) tape autoloaders and libraries, and the bundling of BrightStor Mobile Backup with Sony file servers and tape libraries to form new backup appliances.