Shirin Azad

The ever-increasing need to constantly evolve technologically in order to stay on par, if not ahead, of the competition has made investments in ERP, CRM, SCM and EAI—technologies that can make or break a company—an absolute must. But severe budgetary constraints have forced companies to resort to various cost-cutting measures. The gargantuan growth of information has made it imperative for organisations to look for a cost-effective storage solution, which is also platform independent. Sensing the demand in this space, Veritas Software recently introduced their Adaptive Software Architecture (ASA) solution in the Indian market.

Shirin Azad, product marketing manager at Veritas, said, “Most storage solutions available today are neither flexible nor scalable. This is one reason why organisations are reluctant to invest in newer storage technologies.

Interoperability is a crucial issue today, both in terms of hardware and software infrastructure. Our framework connects different hardware devices, operating systems, topologies, applications and databases to the organisations’ people, processes and software resources, creating a highly efficient and effective storage environment.”

But despite Veritas’ assurances regarding the interoperability capabilities of ASA, the issue weighing heavily on the minds of most customers is return on investment (RoI). A recent study conducted by Information Week said that 82 percent of IT buying decisions are based on the RoI factor. But Azad said that since the entire issue of storage is taken care of by ASA, organisations could now concentrate more on core competencies than on storage. This in turn ensures an early RoI as a company’s resources are freed for concentrating on business rather than on tactical problems.

Downtime is another major issue faced by companies, which accounts for significant escalation in cost. A Gartner report said that for most financial companies even an hour of downtime meant losses between $7-8 million. To assure clients of a low downtime Veritas conducted benchmark studies, which Azad said proved that the ASA solution is 20 percent faster than similar existing solutions.

Veritas’ solution also enables an organisation to achieve tremendous cost savings in the areas of operations and training. Currently, systems management accounts for a large part of an organisation’ IT spending. ASA will eliminate the need for multiple administrators specialising in myriad operating systems to handle their IT needs as this one solution can handle different platforms.

Other than ASA, Veritas also plans to promote SANPoint Control—a storage research management product, Veritas Cluster Server—enables application uptime, Veritas Foundation—a combination of Veritas Volume Manager and Veritas File System. Veritas Foundation enables an organisation to do a complete backup online without having to take the system down. Said Azad, “In India it is only a matter of time before people start realising that storage management plays a direct role in reducing cost and increasing revenue.”

Veritas plans to increase its presence in India through partnerships.