An Extended Invitation

A survey done by Giga Information Group sometime back, reported that today’s

CIOs are most concerned about aligning IT investments with business directions,

building strong IT service delivery, cutting costs, managing resources and

putting in place an enterprise storage architecture. And with enterprises going

into a cost-conscious mode and introspecting on their IT investments, industry

majors like HP are bullish that a stable IT set-up is possible only through a

robust and proactive storage management policy. 

To this end HP has unfolded its new storage strategy–‘ENSA Extended’–an

evolved form of its widely accepted Enterprise Network Storage Architecture (ENSA).

The strategy assumes significance as it comes close on the heels of its Compaq

merger. The new strategy is aimed at leveraging the strengths of the combined

entity and to move forward as the new HP. The strategy (ENSA), which was

introduced in 1998, was hailed as a revolutionary development at that time,

because of its ability to manage and deliver the right information anywhere,

anytime. Claims Howard Elias, senior V-P, and general manager, HP Network

Storage Solutions, "For nearly four years, thousands of our customers have

built modular networked storage environments based on our ENSA strategy. The

CIOs of many enterprise segments have told us that ENSA has enabled them to

better manage their storage systems and has added value to their IT

investments."

Adaptive storage 



According to sources at HP India, ENSA extended is designed to put customers

in control of their data center environments by allowing them to adopt their

storage infrastructures through active intelligent management.

According to Avijit Basu, marketing manager (NSS), enterprise systems group,

HP, "The complexity of networked storage environments, combined with

limited financial and human resources of IT departments, have become a challenge

in managing the storage needs of the enterprise. As a leading player in the

storage arena, HP through ENSA extended has put in place a holistic approach

that focuses on technical innovation that promises stress free storage

services." 

‘ENSA Extended’ Offering Virtualization: Adds simplicity and enables utilization of heterogeneous storage assets Application integration: Application aware approach that provides greater user responsiveness Active intelligent management Universal networked storage

ENSA extended is a major milestone in storage management. It brings to table

the full use of adaptive storage technology. With rapid technology obsolescence,

the ability of IT infrastructure to cope with newer technologies quickly and

flawlessly has become a challenge. This is where adaptive storage makes its

entry. Riding on the three main drivers of adaptive storage — controllable,

resilient, and extensible, the ENSA extended provides a flexible yet dynamic

storage management.

Another unique feature of the ENSA extended strategy is that it addresses the

needs of the system administrators as well as the application users. This is a

conscious move by HP, because in the past storage solutions often saw from the

perspective of the systems administrator and did not concentrate on the

application users. This lacuna is taken care of in the new strategy by using the

application aware methodology that sets the stage for true end-to-end

integration. With ENSA extended, storage has indeed come of age!

Shrikanth G in Chennai