Amdahl's Murphy: Storage management is our future
THE STORAGE MANAGEMENT systems business is growing like hotcakes. As the demand for bigger and bigger storage capacity accelerates among both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce companies, Amdahl Software hopes to get a piece of the action.
In January, Amdahl will spin off from its parent company, Fujitsu Group, and become a stand-alone seller and ISV of storage management products. It will change its name and fine-tune its branding and strategy as it aspires to compete with companies such as IBM, EMC, and Veritas.
InfoWorld Executive Producer/New Media Katherine Bull sat down with Amdahl Software CEO Steve Murphy to talk about the company's plans and the state of the storage market.
InfoWorld: It's been awhile since we've heard much about Amdahl Software. What's going on with the company?
Murphy: First of all, Amdahl Software is a name that will go away. We are still part of the Fujitsu Group that bought Amdahl Corporation three years ago, but Amdahl is in the process of remissioning itself. Amdahl got started 30 years ago and focused on the OS-390 architecture, 3270 mainframes, and plug compatibles. We're no longer in that business. In fact, it became quite evident two or three years ago that more and more of our business was in the solutions business with DMR Consulting, our billion-dollar management consulting practice. So Amdahl was a little bit more innovative and ahead of the game than Hewlett-Packard or PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The other business that has evolved is our open-systems business. Fujitsu is now bringing out Sun clones versus mainframe clones. And we started developing our own intellectual property, specifically in the storage management area, which is a real differentiator for anybody selling.
InfoWorld: What is your new name going to be?
Murphy: We're not sure. We hired two consulting companies to look at the history of the company, how we really started in the software business, and how it's focused in the storage management area. So they'll come up with a wingding name that will mean something in relation to our heritage and represent what we're doing today.
InfoWorld: When you're going out and talking to customers, what kinds of issues are you coming up against, either from a business perspective or a technology perspective?
Murphy: Well, the business and technology perspectives are somewhat related in that in this New Economy information or data is the new currency. Whether it's a business-to-business or business-to-consumer environment, high availability of Web-enabled systems is paramount. So the key issue that we're dealing with is
Symantec Backup Exec 12 and Backup Exec System Recovery 8 deliver industry leading Windows data protection and system recovery. Download this whitepaper to find out the top reasons to upgrade and how to get continuous data protection and complete system recovery.
Data and system loss — from a hard drive failure, malicious attack, natural disaster, or simple human error — can happen anytime. Don’t leave your business vulnerable. Make sure you have a secure recovery strategy in place. Symantec's latest backup and system recovery technology can efficiently restore critical applications, individual emails and documents and even restore your entire system in minutes in the event of a loss.
Businesses face a growing challenge to ensure that the IT environment is properly protected. Backup Exec 12 integrates with other applications in the Symantec family of products, to complement your current data protection strategy, keep your data securely backed up and make it recoverable when you need it most.
