CEO Steven Murphy discusses the evolution of storage technology and the Bluefin standard's impact FUJITSU SOFTEK IS in the business of simplifying data storage with its Storage Manager product, which lets users manage their storage infrastructure via a single interface in a multiplatform environment. President and CEO Steven Murphy met with InfoWorld News Editor Mark Jones and Reporter Scott Tyler Shafer to discuss recent advances in storage technology, the Bluefin standard, and ways in which the market has evolved. InfoWorld: Give us a quick overview of your products and your vision for the company. Murphy: Since we’ve launched the company, our whole value proposition [has been] about helping companies simplify [and] optimize their multivendor storage infrastructure under a common console [that] allows them to see, provision, and manage multivendor storage assets regardless of operating system [and] regardless of whether it’s direct attached to NAS or SAN. Being able to see and manage and provision that infrastructure based on application priority, and then automate the functions required to do basic space management, allocation, and provisioning of the right type of storage to the right applications based on business rules and policies is something that’s evolved. Two and a half years ago, when we went out to talk to several of our customers as part of our carve-out, they were very frank [and] said, “What you’ve given us is a very interesting solution to a problem we don’t have.” [But] a funny thing happened in the last two and a half years: As much as [customers] thought they didn’t have a problem, they over-provisioned — and in many cases bought two or three times more storage than if they had had software to help them architect and install and implement a storage infrastructure properly. We’ve got companies who have provisioned the storage infrastructure [until] it’s over-allocated and anywhere from 50 to 75 percent under-utilized. They have the excuse of deploying that type of infrastructure because the cost of storage is getting cheaper. It’s been countermanded by the fact that the cost of managing a storage infrastructure is five times the cost of the actual media. Today we do have customers that look to our solution as the only way out, because they haven’t been able to clean-sweep their entire floor and go to a homogeneous environment. They’ve got multivendor environments, [even if] they wanted to go to a single-vendor environment, because most of the storage disk players have divorced their processing partners at least twice, if not three times over the last two and a half years. Many companies are in a situation where interoperability of multivendor assets, whether it’s switch or disk, is a reality. Trying to get things that will work together at the right service levels is becoming a significant business problem because they don’t have the storage resource or administration managers that [can] help them re-architect, re-implement, and fulfill the promise that they saw in moving to a SAN environment. And in many cases, they’re stuck managing both the direct-attached and SAN environment within the same application infrastructure. [When] we started out two and a half years ago … we were the first company to talk about launching a software solution to this problem. InfoWorld: Clearly you’re not the only company to do that now. Do you still feel you’re two years ahead of the market? Murphy: Yes. With the launch of our Softek Storage Manager product, which is the first and only product that looks at storage, infrastructure, [and] assets from a multivendor, multioperating [system] environment on a common console, you [can] drill down and perform automation functions. Whether that’s automated space management, automated archive delete, or automated provisioning, we’re clearly the first company and farther ahead than probably anybody in the marketplace, as witnessed recently with [customer] Tokyo-Mitsubishi Bank, which [was] able within the first week of implementation to recover the cost of purchasing Softek Storage Manager. That product has changed the face of our company. Where we were very much a product company — selling migration, replication, snapshot, mirroring, disaster recovery, SAN fabric management, and space management products — we’re now in the mode of being able to sell a strategic storage management strategy, which allows [customers] to have a common console [and] gives them the visualization, the inventory, and discovery of those assets. That allows them to begin the process of re-implementing or installing their new environments in a much simpler and more optimized fashion, with a significant return on investment. We’re in a position where on one hand we’ve been flattered that our strategy’s been co-opted by every hardware company in the marketplace. Where we may have had a two and a half year lead, that gap has closed. But we still have a significant lead in the marketplace and our product road map is not slowing down, nor [are] our acquisitions to feed what is a very strategic storage management platform going forward. InfoWorld: Where are you in terms of optimizing applications to work better with storage? Murphy: We’ve been managing storage by applications for well over two years. We have Toyota Business Systems right here in sunny Santa Clara, managing probably the largest Exchange server in California. They run 24/7, well over 4,000 production users on a virtualized SAN that is Softek-enabled with a virtualization storage manager. Clearly the move in the marketplace is to be very application-centric — that is what the role of storage is in the first place, to provide storage services to the application infrastructure in a way that’s cost effective. InfoWorld: When will we get to a consolidation point in the market? Murphy: We’ve already started a consolidation. We’ve acquired three companies — or the software code assets of three major companies’ products — over the last year. We anticipate a couple of acquisitions this fiscal year, ending in March. We’re seeing IBM acquire, we’ve seen HP acquire [and] now merge, [and] we’re seeing EMC … probably looking at some other products. … I believe [a lot of] consolidation will happen over the next 12 months. InfoWorld: What things would you like to do with your software that it’s not doing today? Murphy: Just expand what capabilities we have today. We’re in a very unique situation and we can see the entire storage infrastructure, both from the SAN fabric and from the disk, from a multivendor environment. We’re looking at products that enhance the visualization, auto-discovery, and implementation of those multivendor assets. We’re specifically looking at one company to help us in that design and implementation [process]. That’s probably one area that if the growth of SAN is going to continue or improve, customers are going to demand better planning, implementation, and architecture tools to help them install and implement their SANs properly. The second area we’re looking at is to extend our market leadership in the area of replication and mirroring. We are probably going to see mandated very shortly — at least in the banking and financial community, and it’s already been done in health care through the HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] regulations — a fairly significant overhaul in disaster recovery and backup requirements to ensure business continuity. This is a response to the lack of true recovery rates, regardless of how well people think they’re backing up their data. We’ll probably see that mandated this year, and that will require technologies that help us do disk-to-disk replication or backup well over 300 to 1,000 miles. Those are breakthrough technologies, some which we have today [and] we’ll be announcing, and some that we will augment with acquisitions. We also are going to be announcing our own virtual pooling and provisioning capability, which we integrated with Storage Manager, in the January timeframe. We’re looking at technologies that help us automate the discovery and association between these logical and the physical attributes of storage, so that you can actually pinpoint and automate the allocation of the right type of storage based on business or application delivery rules or service levels to the right server at the right time. Helping you create a truly self-managing storage utility that serves up storage on demand based on application rules. Those are the three areas that we’re looking at. InfoWorld: How will the Bluefin standard for managing SANs impact you? Murphy: We’re actively involved in both the Bluefin and the SNIA [Storage Networking Industry Association] activities. We have licensing and partner arrangements with every hardware manufacturer in this space, and that’s what you’re going to continue to need even after the Bluefin initiatives, because you can be 75 to 80 percent compliant [with the spec] and still not be compatible. [We’re] going to be out front and have API licensing arrangements and partnering arrangements with various hardware suppliers for the next 12 to 18 months. But once we get out about 12 to 18 months, the work that’s being done now will pay off, because we’ll be compliant enough and compatible enough to get to an interoperability level so that the customer will then take us the last mile or the last 25 percent. As we see the consolidation in the storage management and software platform marketplace, there will be a few emerging independent players. And the customer will bring in their primary and secondary disk and switch providers, sit them in a room with their primary storage management software platform, and say, “Figure it out. I want an automated storage utility that serves up storage based on a class of application, based on business policy to the environment, and if you want to play in my shop, figure it out.” I use the analogy of a French Canadian giving instructions to a Paris cab driver. [It’s] the same supposed language, but they can’t talk to each other or don’t want to talk to each other. Eventually the customer’s going to make their primary and secondary provider talk to their storage utility platform, which will be software-based. InfoWorld: What’s your take on IBM and its autonomic initiative? How will you fit into that? Murphy: Their automation strategy is very compatible to ours. They’re looking at making sure the API’s available so that companies can interoperate with the IBM capabilities. Granted, in a homogeneous environment — whether it’s IBM or EMC — the automation in those homogenous environments will be very impressive. The issue we’re focusing on is automating storage provisioning, space management, recovery management across by application, regardless of what platform it serves. So we will probably cooperate, emulate, parrot, and even exceed IBM’s, EMC’s, and Hitachi’s automation efforts, because we’ll be having to provide it across multivendor [environments], whereas they’ll be spending most of their time trying to improve and create a holistic automation solution for their homogeneous environment. Our requirements will be to meet or exceed the automation capabilities that IBM and others are articulating in the marketplace. And we’ve done that before. IBM’s the largest reseller of our automated transparent migration facility. So I’m happy to see [IBM’s Michael] Zisman very open with their software partners, because they realize that there’s a certain market segment that’ll be homogenous to IBM. InfoWorld: What can we expect from Fujitsu Softek down the pike? Murphy: We’re going to be announcing this year the multivendor auto-provisioning, integrated, common console Storage Manager. We’re already in early support with customers, and we don’t announce product unless we have customers that can testify to the ROI and the ease of use. It’ll be in the December, if not early January timeframe [when we announce that]. … You’ll start to see Storage Manager being the suite of product offerings, and we’ll be launching products that automate the space management, automate recovery, and automate tool provisioning. They’ll all be branded and priced as optional modules underneath the strategic multivendor Storage Manager.