Looking to bolster its storage offerings, IBM Thursday
struck a deal to acquire TrelliSoft, a maker of storage resource management
software.
The deal to buy the Glen Ellyn, Ill., company will give IBM a storage
resource management (SRM) product geared to Java and Web-based storage
supporting a variety of platforms, including Windows and open-source
alternatives. TrelliSoft will be integrated with IBM’s software group, with
its products available immediately from Big Blue’s Tivoli Software division.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
“Our customers have asked us to help manage their storage the way we’ve
enabled them to manage their systems,” Robert LeBlanc, general manager at
Tivoli Software, said in a statement. “This enables customers to more
effectively and efficiently manage their storage resources, and, as a
result, improve their return on investment.”
SRM software is used as a dashboard, giving companies an automated tool set
to tweak the storage infrastructure by adjusting capacity, availability,
performance, and asset management.
IBM’s push comes as the storage management sector bucks downward trends in
IT spending, capitalizing on companies’ realization of the need for data
storage and backup. IBM is battling storage incumbents such as EMC and
Veritas for the lead of the lucrative storage market. According to research
done by Aberdeen Group, the need for storage capacity grows at a clip of 37
percent a year, as IT systems become ever more complicated and pervasive.
Gartner Group estimates the storage management software market was worth
$6.6 billion last year, with it forecast to top $16.7 billion in 2005,
driven by enterprises’ desire to wring more productivity out of fewer
resources in times of fiscal restraint.
TrelliSoft will join SRM products IBM had under development, giving the
company’s Tivoli unit SRM software proven in the market.
“Customers and partners will see a significant benefit to their businesses
with the addition of IBM’s development and distribution strength,” said
Stephen Donovan, TrelliSoft’s CEO.
Earlier this summer, IBM made a big splash by introducing two
new versions of its Shark storage servers, boasting they would double
the storage server’s performance while slashing data processing costs in
half.
In the midst of pervasive IT gloom, Big Blue is also crowing about its deal
with General Motors to buy 10 high-powered Unix computers that will be
linked to form one of the world’s top supercomputers.
