ILM to drive storage: EMC

SINGAPORE: Following the announcement by EMC during July-August this year to bet its future on what it calls the next big thing in storage, the Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), the company has made rapid strides in making this concept a reality. The company is understood to have made inroads on this concept with implementations in about 10-15 companies in the US.

It will be ready to take the references sometime in early part of 2004. It is now taking this concept to the ASEAN region. On 19 November 2003, EMC in association with NCS announced the first proof-of-concept solution for ILM in Asia. This is seen as a significant development as NCS Pte Ltd, is a leading regional IT and communications engineering services provider in Singapore, and is believed to be the single largest influencer on Singapore Government’s IT initiatives.

EMC and NCS demonstrated how ILM works in real-life environments in terms of business continuity, rapid recovery, e-mail archiving, file distribution across heterogeneous networks, automated storage management, back-up to disks and enterprise content management. More than 10 applications were integrated in the demonstration. With this, NCS became the first SI in ASEAN to architect, design, and implement the first live demo of ILM in the region.

This demo will pave the wave for ILM implementation in Asia. Dr Chong Yoke Sin, COO, NCS, on the occasion said, "NCS is committed to provide the best solutions and technologies for the benefit of our customers. We are proud to be the first systems integrator in ASEAN to prove the ILM concept. We believe that businesses can reap the opportunities that technologies such as ILM offer. This successful proof-of-concept exemplifies the depth and caliber of NCS’ systems integration and professional services capability. This is indeed a breakthrough for storage technologies and demonstrates the outcome of successful partnership and team work."

Commenting on the commitment of EMC towards ILM, Tony Marzulli, Vice President, Open Software, EMC, said, "The mission of IT has always been to help organizations maximize the value of their information at the lowest total cost. Now ILM will enable this.

With ILM companies can centrally manage enterprise wide information management policies that span all processes, applications, operating systems, and resources while providing an integrated view into all information assets, both structured and unstructured."

ILM for EMC has become the mantra following the acquisition of LEGATO Systems and the agreement to acquire Documentum. In July, EMC issued approximately 106 million shares of EMC common stock for all outstanding shares of LEGATO Systems Inc. Following that the company spent the last 100 days developing a bullet-proof integration playbook and moving forward rapidly.

"The synergies between EMC and Legato’s products, distribution, people and culture have accelerated the creation of the ultimate information lifecycle management company. In October the required regulatory approval processes was completed," said Marzulli.

EMC reported financial results for the third quarter of 2003 reflected balanced double-digit growth across all major business segments and improved profitability. Total consolidated revenue for the third quarter was $1.51 billion, 20 percent higher than the $1.26 billion reported for the third quarter of 2002.

"The third-quarter results reflect strong customer acceptance of EMC's lineup of automated networked storage solutions," added Marzulli. Further the agreement to acquire Documentum will further enable us to complement the missing puzzles.

EMC unveiled several new products in the third quarter. These include the DMX systems, software and related technologies, including the new Symmetrix DMX3000, an entry-level Symmetrix DMX800 configuration, new advanced replication technology, native iSCSI connectivity and enhanced functionality for mainframe; extension of EMC CLARiiON's to EMC Navisphere, EMC SnapView and EMC SAN Copy software and strengthening of its open software portfolio with new VisualSRM and VisualSAN software for small-and medium-sized organizations; and the introduction of EMC OpenScale, automated "pay as you go" billing for storage infrastructure.

CNS