HP Unveils Storage Management Software

Hewlett-Packard on Monday unveiled storage resource management software for midsize businesses.

The HP Storage Essentials Standard Edition, scheduled for release in June, was unveiled at the Storage Networking World conference in San Diego. The announcement followed by less than a week after HP upped the capacity of its All-in-One Storage System hardware, also aimed at mid-size businesses, with the introduction of a third model to the product line.

Storage resource management (SRM) software is used in optimizing the capacity of storage area networks and network-attached storage. The software has the potential of improving IT staff efficiency by simplifying storage management.

HP's SRM software is the first product from the company's recently formed Enterprise Storage and Server Software business unit. HP and its rivals, which include IBM and EMC, believe small and midsized businesses are the best prospects becoming for new storage customers since the segment as a whole underutilizes technology. Based on analyst reports, HP believes the storage market in general will double over the next three years to $12 billion, with a sizable portion coming from SMBs.

HP's latest product uses a Web-based interface to manage a storage infrastructure. The software provides toubleshooting, reporting, file-level scanning, integrated SAN and NAS management, and monitoring of infrastructure performance and utilization rates. An optional software plug in is available for monitoring the status of a backup process.

Storage Essentials Standard Edition is expected to be upgradeable later this year to HP's enterprise edition for companies that need to scale to meet the needs of larger environments. The standard edition integrates with HP Systems Insight Manager software for unified server and storage management.