News in advance: 3Com to Jump Into Storage Market
INTERNETWEEK - Wednesday, October 28, 1998, 9:30 a.m. ET.
Reflecting the growing interest in storage area
networks (SANs), 3Com Corp. on Monday will take
the wraps off a series of products and services
geared to supporting the burgeoning data storage
market.
3Com is the first networking vendor to attempt to
stake a claim in the SAN marketplace--which until
now has been the domain of storage and server
vendors. The supplier said its experience with LAN
and WAN development, and the components
needed to mesh LANs and WANs with SANs, will
help it woo customers in a hotly competitive market.
SANs--100-megabyte-per-second Fibre Channel
networks whose sole purpose is to lash storage
devices in a loop separate from the data
network--are being eyed by an increasing number
of IT managers as a solution to their escalating data
storage requirements.
The 3Com SAN approach, dubbed
StorageConnect, consists of three components,
centered around products, a compatibility program,
and sales and support.
The line of products will initially include a host bus
adapter, a line of hubs and switches and a network
management suite that will dovetail with 3Com's
Transcend software application. The adapters,
hubs and switches will be manufactured by a third
party, whose identity 3Com declined to disclose.
The compatibility program will include storage
devices and apps that have been tested by 3Com
to determine interoperability and thus guarantee
performance, according to Joe Ammirato, director of
marketing for 3Com's advanced products division.
The compatibility program will initially feature three
product sets: a LAN-free backup using Legato
Systems Inc.'s NetWorker and SmartMedia backup
apps in concert with tape libraries manufactured by
MTI Technology Corp.; a high-availability RAID
deployment using Data General's Clariion 5000
series Fibre Channel RAID; and a "data
consolidation solution" using MTI's Gladiator RAID
with MTI's host-to-LUN (logical unit number)
mapping software.
Analysts and storage observers generally endorsed
3Com's entrance into the quickly evolving SAN
marketplace.
"It's significant because 3Com is the first networking
company to get into this space; in one sense it
validates the industry. It will be interesting to see
what kind of welcome they get, but people have
always said that [SAN development] needs a
marriage of networking and storage vendors," said
Giga Information Group analyst Anders Lofgren.
3Com said the first StorageConnect products will
be released during the first half of 1999; prices
have not yet been determined.
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