EMC Announces SAN Architect Automated SAN Design Software

Hopkinton, - May 12, 2003 -

EMC Corporation today announced EMC SAN Architect™—new web-based software for SAN design, modeling and validation—as part of its new online EMC ControlCenter management capabilities. The new SAN Architect extends EMC's lead in automated networked storage by enabling end-users and integrators to reduce the risk and time associated with SAN planning, design and change management. With SAN Architect, customers now have a way to model changes—or design new SANs— quickly and easily, with the assurance that the resulting topology will function properly within their specific environments.

Built on EMC's experience gained through the design and installation of thousands of real-world storage infrastructures—comprising more than half a million SAN ports—SAN Architect surpasses all existing solutions in both depth and breadth of capability. SAN Architect guides storage architects and IT administrators through the design and validation of fully functional SANs. By eliminating repetitive manual tasks and removing the guesswork from "what-if" scenarios, SAN Architect adds predictive intelligence to customers' SAN consolidation and control efforts. SAN Architect ensures that proposed changes are accurate and precise by modeling and validating hosts, host bus adapters, switches and storage arrays, producing a final design that's 100% supported by EMC.

Randy Carter, SAN Architect at Radian Group, Inc, said, "With SAN Architect, what used to take 24 hours I can now do in four. Until a few months ago, designing a SAN was tedious, time consuming and fraught with risk. SAN design involved consulting numerous compatibility reference sources, manually white boarding out the flows, building a Visio presentation and finally creating an Excel spreadsheet to fit everything together. SAN Architect not only saves my company tremendous amounts of time, but I can be assured that the output works and will be supported by EMC."

Tony Marzulli, EMC's Vice President of Open Software Marketing, said, "Customers are faced with ever-growing complexity and heavier workloads, but still need to respond more quickly, and do it right the first time. SAN Architect addresses these specific issues by putting the results of EMC's years of interoperability testing and deep networked storage knowledge at the fingertips of every SAN designer."

Carolyn DiCenzo, Research VP, Storage Management Software, Gartner, said, "As users move to heterogeneous, fabric-attached storage environments, the complexity of managing the increasingly diverse number of devices and the associated levels of software versions increases the effort required to define a solid design and to test the impact of any change. There is clearly a need for software to automate this effort, supporting the design and reducing the risk as changes are made to the environment."

The template-driven SAN Architect is particularly suited for customers with rapidly changing SAN environments; planned multiple server, switch, or array rollouts and consolidations; or who simply need to validate changes or implementation plans without interrupting production systems.

SAN Architect extends customers' reach into EMC's best practices and accumulated knowledge base, and serves as a highly intelligent extension of EMC's world-renowned interoperability lab. E-Lab Tested solutions, including those created with SAN Architect, are fully interoperable with EMC information storage systems, enabling customers to deploy heterogeneous storage networks, more quickly, reliably and cost-effectively.

Using SAN Architect, storage administrators can easily determine which changes can and should be made, then affect them with confidence using EMC SAN Manager software's active control capabilities.

Pricing and Availability

SAN Architect is available immediately as a one-year subscription with an entry-level list price of $2,400.

EMC Corporation is the world leader in information storage systems, software, networks and services, providing automated networked storage solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to better and more cost-effectively manage, protect and share their information. More information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.