Veritas rolling out utility computing to channel

Veritas Software is starting to reach out to the channel with products related to its utility computing strategy.

Veritas Software is starting to reach out to the channel with products related to its utility computing strategy.

The company, which last week acquired Ejasent, a developer of software for virtualising applications across servers, has just started a trial program under which it is making parts of its utility computing strategy available to an initial group of about 30 solution providers, said Michael Sotnick, vice president of Americas partner sales.

Veritas is moving its utility computing platform to the channel on a module by module basis starting with its i3 software, which monitors application performance across servers, networks and storage, Sotnick said.

"We don't say you have to buy all the utility computing products from Veritas," said Sotnick. "Instead, we use the building block approach. You can start with i3 or clustering, and then over time add other building blocks."

Many of those building blocks have come from recent acquisitions such as this week's US$59 million purchase of Ejasent, which is expected to close this month.

Ejasent's core software, UpScale, allows applications to be moved from server to server without disruption. The software takes a snapshot of the application and its state for transfer in near real time, company officials said. Ejasent also brings its MicroMeasure set of tools for tracking applications across servers for use in metering and customer chargebacks.

Ejasent is Veritas' third utility computing acquisition in 13 months. In December of 2002, the company acquired Precise Software and its i3 technology, as well as Jareva Technologies and its OpForce technology for automating server deployment.

Troy Toman, senior director of product management at Veritas, said that as his company integrates Ejasent with its i3 and OpForce products, the result will be a complete application utility computing offering.

"For example, let's say you deploy a database on a two-way server and monitor performance with i3," he said. "If traffic is high, i3 can notify OpForce, which can then automatically provision a 4-way server. Then UpScale can move the application to the new server without disruption."

Part of integrating the applications will involve increasing their automation capabilities, said Toman. However, a key factor in the automation of the process is the conservative nature of enterprise customers. "Customers are not ready to hand all their keys over to the software," he said.

Dan Carson, vice president of marketing and business development at Open Systems Solutions, a US-based Veritas partner that is not yet participating in the trial program, said Veritas's utility computing strategy has good potential if the vendor can tie it to storage management as part of a system-wide management capability.

"As you move applications, you need to move the storage as well, and there are ramifications here for Veritas," Carson said. "Storage management tools are not yet complete; there are still a lot of manual operations required."