IBM Introduces Next Generation Data Protection Software

ARMONK, NY .- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the availability of next generation enterprise data protection software to help large enterprises and small-to-medium sized businesses optimize personnel productivity, improve application availability, and enhance information and data security.

Today, IBM is introducing Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) version 5.5, which offers a host of new features and functionality that are designed to introduce key improvements in data security, performance, functionality, and ease of use. TSM plays an integral role in helping customers optimize storage assets, protect the integrity of their data and comply with data retention requirements. TSM provides centralized, policy-based management capable of handling virtually any type of data on practically any form of storage. Its progressive incremental methodology, subfile backup capabilities and tight integration with storage hardware devices such as IBM N series and NetApp Advanced Single Instance Store (A-SIS) can greatly reduce data redundancy, network bandwidth and storage resource consumption.

“Business of all sizes need data protection solutions that will not only manage their information growth, but that can also provide solid business continuity, protection against system disruptions, data security and quick recovery of critical data in the event of an outage,” said Craig Smelser, Vice President, IBM Tivoli Storage and Security Development. “TSM version 5.5 should help our customers to address the availability, reliability and performance of business-critical applications and hardware, and should help them optimize their storage requirements and meet ongoing needs for data security.”

New TSM version 5.5 product features and enhancements introduced today include:

* Enhanced data security, encryption and key management for TSM clients: The TSM client has supported the optional encryption of data before being sent to the TSM server, helping to secure backup and archive data during transmission and storage. TSM now generates, encrypts, stores and manages the encryption key in the TSM database for TSM clients. This is in addition to its existing support for application protection modules, applications that exploit the TSM application programming interface (API), and application managed encryption for the IBM TS1120 and LTO-4 tape drives. With encryption keys managed by the TSM server and not the end user, authorized users always have access to their data without having to remember the encryption password.
* Enhanced Microsoft Windows application coverage: These enhancements help improve both recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) for large SQL databases and Exchange servers via TSM’s support of Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for Microsoft SQL and exploitation of VSS for Microsoft Exchange 2007. Recovery point objectives can be improved as more frequent, low impact backups can be performed. Recovery time objectives also can be improved via the ability to perform virtually instant restores from local snapshot backups. The ease of use of TSM HSM for Windows has also been enhanced with an enhanced graphical user interface, as well as enhanced interoperability with other file system filter based software (such as anti-virus software) and enhanced storage utilization.
* Integrated approach to protection of VMware environments: This integration simplifies configuration and provides improved data management when TSM is used in a VMware environment. This is accomplished via TSM version 5.5 integration with VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) to coordinate the movement of virtual machine data from the VCB proxy server to tape devices.
* Enhanced scalability and performance: With the introduction of concurrent retrieve access, TSM version 5.5 is able to implement more efficient restore capabilities from sequential access disk pools. This new feature enables multiple TSM operations to perform simultaneous restore operations.
* Enhanced ease-of-use: With simple re-start for server-to-server export/import TSM version 5.5 enables the movement of backup and meta data from one server to another, helping minimize the impact of a disruption to operations such as a network outage.

According to a recent IDC report [1], in Q207 IBM achieved double digit year-over-year revenue growth in the storage software, growing fastest and gaining the most revenue share of the top three vendors. This marks the tenth consecutive quarter that IBM Storage Software had equal-or-above-market average revenue growth.

As part of the IBM Service Management and Information Risk Management initiatives, Tivoli Storage Manager continues to play an integral role in helping customers optimize storage assets, protect the integrity and resiliency of their data and comply with data retention requirements. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager V5.5 will be available on November 16, 2007 through IBM and IBM Business Partners. For information about IBM and its storage solutions, please visit http://www.ibm.com/storage.