Does it mean a comeback of SRM tools ?

Nothing related to VMware SRM - Site Recovery Manager - but with storage environments and their management, but there is a link, we will cover in the article. This use of the term in another context confirms its availibility to be associated with other IT segments or let him live these solutions through market, initially very promising. Gartner released its latest Magic Quadrant about SRM (Storage Resource Manager) combining the SAN Manager and SRM as we understood initially by their coverage of the logical environment. The SRM seems to be a good idea when data volumes grows fast with difficulties to control especially in an tough economic period. The SRM provided the 

opportunity to understand the environment under use, eliminate duplicate files, free up space, monitor and block access, impose quotas and delaying investment ... The SRM did not take off alone, the industry believed that the engine could be used in the ILM, but it was never confirmed as his promises: the wish to "link" applications and businesses with IT tools to align IT service to business needs and enterprise activities. In the race for efficiency and optimization of storage, SRM is in his perfect place. 

With server virtualization projects, the SRM becomes useful since everything is hidden and actually rather complicated underneath. We understand the need to retain solutions for optimization environments and not just administration. SRM historically divided into 2 groups: physical and logical, find a semblance of utility, which augurs 

mergers or at least commercial/technology partnerships between actors. The physical group is covered by the SAN Manager therefore rather related to the infrastructure of storage networks, topology, inventory units, zoning, LUNs ... and the second group, the logical part, rather the understanding of environments using physical resources such as utilization rates, migration of data, establishment of rules for moving inactive files for example. SRM has developed originally heavy agent based solutions towards small, light and functionally complete. But SRM, long seen as a "Nice to have" with long projects to implement, seem to receive better market adoption. I think it is the vendors who useful consider such solutions in virtualized environments, the opportunity to place again their long time developments, it's time now to add features to understand and control "files in files" (virtualization encapsulation), the user adoption will arrive later.

Gartner reveals some relevant figures. The SRM market in 2008 was $ 725m, up by 7.25% and is expected to decline. So it is a true segment for such an amount but it should fall to $ 711M in 2013 then finally stable enough, so conservative and solid for next 5 years. Leaders are: 

- EMC $ 464m with 64% market share (PDM) showing decrease of $ 23M compared to 2007. 

- IBM with $ 95M or 13% of PDM Winning $ 14M compared to 2007. 

- HP $ 59M or 8% market share rising by $ 23M since 2007. 

- NetApp with $ 32M or 4% market share in $ 27M progress vs 2007. 

- Symantec with $ 23M or 3% market share also win $ 1.7M since 2007. 

- CA with $ 11M or 1% market share. 

These 6 players represent $ 684m or about 95% of the market. All the other actors, an insignificant share of $ 41M so just 5%. Misery. One group is distinguished by the completeness of its solution: CA, EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp and Symantec, HDS is a surprise here and the second group rather isolated niche with SAN Manager Brocade where only stands out with Akorri, Northern Parklife and NTP. It may come couple DPRM players (Data Protection Resource Manager) such as Aptare, Agite, Bocada, ServerGraph (Rocket), Arkivio (Rocket), Tek-Tools and WysDM (EMC).

Among the historical and current products include the following actors: 

- AppIQ has quickly established itself as the industry reference and HP has acquired the company in 2005 to become HP Storage Essentials.

- Arkivio saved from defeat by Rocket Software has taken over the assets of the software editor of Mountain View and continues to offer the range. Rocket has also ServerGraph, DPRM specialist (Data Protection Resource Management).

- Astrum acquired by EMC in 2003 to be the logical SRM part intending to build a true SMB SRM offering with the SAN Manager coming from Prisa Networks, acquired also in a few months before. 

- BMC launched in the early 2000s an initiative ACMS (Application-Centric Storage Management) which disappeared quickly, the company sold Patrol Storage Manager to EMC in 2003. 

- CA has pushed BrightStor Storage Resource Manager with the interesting feature to support the mainframe environment, which helped the company win large deals.

- CreekPath absorbed by Opsware then the latter by HP. 

- Crosswalk disappeared quietly without making noise. There were 2 interesting products iGrid, a NAS solution scale-out and the famous Storage Manager. Crosswalk was founded by CEO and founder of McData, Jack McDonnell.

- Global Data is a german SRM ISV to watch. 

- EMC has made many acquisitions with Astrum and Prisa supplementing its offer Enterprise ControlCenter. 

- HDS has quickly understood the importance of controlling the infrastructure and left its offer HiCommand 

Storage Services Manager who is in fact HP Storage Essentials. HDS has even signed an agreement with 

Aptare. 

- HighGround moved under SUN humbrella in 2001. 

- IBM also wanted to offer high SRM with the wide range Tivoli product line with TrelliSoft, acquired in 2002. 

- Monosphere had attempted a more focused approach with provisioning and capacity, but the niche 

proved too small and Quest acquired the company.

- Northern Parklife is still alive in his windows niche.

- NTP Software tries to resist with its SRM solutions dedicated also to Windows. 

- Onaro was a small gem acquired by NetApp early 2008 for about $ 100M and NetApp swapped Symantec CommandCentral. 

- Prisa Networks developper of a SMB SAN Manager acquired by EMC in 2002 for $ 20M. 

- Quest Software confirms its interest in the sector with product availability Quest Storage Horizon coming from Monosphere acquired early 2009. 

- SANavigator, initially a SAN solution inventory, acquired by McData then Brocade. 

- Storability acquired by StorageTek, and StorageTek by Sun and now Oracle entered in the game.

- StorScape, joint-venture between Eurologic and Hermes SoftLab, returned in Slovenia, the IP is owned by the software engineering services company.

- SUN has always looked to this party and these acquisitions have always been so successful with right targets (so many errors). Highground was the SUN initiative to attempt to position the company in that SRM segment, it remains an experience ... then STK Storability arrived with but still no great revolution and market adoption. 

- TeraCloud has been incorporated into Estorian. 

- TrelliSoft was acquired by IBM. 

- Veritas SANPoint Control has disappeared and replaced by CommandCentral Storage that combines the physical and logical part absorbed from the acquisition of NTP Storage Reporter in 2002. The adoption of market remains weak. 

- WQuinn passed successively from Precise and Veritas and naturally at Symantec. We can not find it in the catalog any more.

SRM come back is still a surprise but it makes sense, now we wait for virtualized environment support and integration to sustain market adoption and deliver SRM figures anticipated by Gartner.