Mainframe systems management company Boole & Babbage Inc is expanding its interest in storage management by extending its SpaceView suite of MVS storage applications to support Unix and Windows NT with a series of modules called SpaceView/DS 1.1. Administrators can also use a single SpaceView Explorer interface that runs on Windows or NT to access all SpaceView services running on all supported platforms. Up on NT, Solaris and AIX now, other modules will follow to support AS/400 and NetWare. SpaceView/DS 1.1 is priced from $750 per CPU – SpaceView Explorer is $5,500 for five seats. The idea is to enable its SpaceView for MVS customers to integrate and manage their client/server storage using the same high-level tools and from the same console. Boole & Babbage’s announcement follows on the tail of recent market research which suggests storage management will be a $4.8bn market by 2002 and that Unix is set to become the mainframe of the future (CI No 3,428). B&B’s storage management business is worth between $15m and $20m of its $200m-odd annual revenue and is derived from its 1988 Impact acquisitions. It claims alternative solutions from the likes of Legato, Candle or Veritas emphasize back-up and high-availability over heterogeneous management. It promises interfaces to EMC, Veritas, Legato, Seagate, HDS, Software AG, IBM ADSM, DFSM, Tivoli and HP OpenView. It will add support for other databases beyond ODBC, new storage performance reporting, ADSM/DFSMS extensions, automation and further platform support.
