Cisco - TABPI

Software links backup, SRM
CA, VERITAS HONE DATA
RESTORE UPGRADES
By Evan Koblentz
Summer upgrades for
Computer Associates
International Inc. and
Veritas Software Corp. backup
and recovery programs will
help users link existing suites
with other technologies.
Features in CA’s BrightStor
Enterprise Backup 10.5 and
Veritas’ Bare Metal Restore
4.6 are also part of the trend
of focusing on data restores.
With CA’s upgrade from
Version 10, users can set up
policy-based job scheduling,
linked with BrightStor Storage
Resource Manager and
related products, said Ed
Cooper, CA product manager,
in Islandia, N.Y.
Enterprise Backup also
now links to Unicenter’s soft-
ware distribution feature, for
sending backup configurations
to remote sites, and to
Microsoft Corp.’s Windows
Server 2003, through the Volume
Shadow Copy Service,
Cooper said. In
addition, it works
with software from
switch makers BrocadeCommunications
Systems Inc.
and McData Corp.
and now has a feature
for verifying
service-level agreements,
officials
added.
The new version
ranges from $5,000
to $20,000, Cooper
said. Available now, it includes
five licenses for BrightStor
Enterprise Portal.
User reactions are mixed.
“I really like the speed and
console that allows me to
manage all of the different
machines,” said Greg Taffet,
CIO of MxEnergy Inc., a
natural gas reseller in Stamford,
Conn.
Conversely, “I haven’t been
terribly impressed,” said Matt
Paull, systems administrator
at Redflex Traffic Systems
Inc., in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Web services get more options
By Darryl K. Taft
Two web services management
software suppliers announced new
products last week, approaching the
issue of managing Web services from
two perspectives.
Both Swingtide Inc., of Portsmouth,
N.H., and Blue Titan Software Inc., of
San Francisco, unveiled new Web services
management solutions, with
Swingtide offering a more passive
solution and Blue Titan delivering a more
active product.
Swingtide made its announcement at
the annual Association for Cooperative
Operations Research and Development
conference in Orlando, Fla. The
company announced two products,
Swingtide Monitor and Swingtide Scorecard,
which enable users to view, analyze
and manage the data they send
via ACORD, SOAP (Simple Object
CA’s BrightStor portal manages rival Veritas’ backup.
Access Protocol) or XML standards, officials
said. Swingtide Monitor tracks
the growth and business usage of Web
services and XML networks and not
the performance of the physical network.
Swingtide Scorecard is a methodology
for improving return on investment
from XML-based Web services.
Swingtide officials said the products
can be tailored to industry needs. The
first industry supported is insurance, for
which Swingtide has incorporated
complete ACORD standards into the
products. Future support will be added
for banking and securities trading.
Meanwhile, Blue Titan announced the
release of Network Director 2.0, its
Web services management solution that
delivers event-driven control for serviceoriented
architectures (see review,
Page 56).
New capabilities in Network Director
NEWS&ANALYSIS
“For the most part, I can get
away with Microsoft, the
built-in backup.”
For its part, Veritas, of
Mountain View, Calif., last
week announced Bare Metal
Restore 4.6, which can restore
a Windows server onto different
hardware from the
original, said Richard Harrison,
Veritas product manager.
With the new feature,
administrators don’t
have to wait for an
identical server to
arrive, and it is useful
in cases where
the original equipment
isn’t made anymore.
Bare Metal
Restore 4.6 requires
Veritas’ high-end
NetBackup software,
Harrison said.
Until next quarter,
the new version
will cost $695 for
Windows licenses and $895
for Unix licenses. After that,
licenses will cost $900 for Windows
and $1,000 for Unix,
Harrison said. ´
2.0 include fabric services, which expose
functions as Web services; active event
messaging; adaptive policy execution;
SOAP stack interoperability; and support
for emerging standards such as Web
Services-Security, Web Services-Policy
and Web Services-ReliableMessaging.
Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with Zap-
Think LLC, in Cambridge, Mass., said he
views Swingtide as unique in its category.
“Instead of rushing the first version
of their software product to market, they
developed an extensive professional services
offering to build relationships with
their customers, build awareness within
their selected target industry and to
gather a detailed understanding of
their customers’ needs,” Bloomberg said.
“By ‘passive,’ we mean that it monitors
XML activity without affecting it and
provides visibility into the XML on a company’s
network,” he said. “In contrast,
Blue Titan has an active management
approach that controls the traffic, ensuring
reliability and actively managing
security policies.” ´
MAY 26, 2003 n eWEEK 37