8/3/2004 -- IBM Corp. and Cisco Systems are about as close to kissing cousins as any two publicly-traded companies are likely to get. That collaboration continued apace last week, as the two companies announced several enhancements to Big Blue's TotolStorage SAN Volume Controller for Cisco's MDS 9000.

The TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller is itself the result of a joint development effort between IBM and Cisco. In this case, IBM embedded its SAN Volume Controller storage software into a pair of Cisco's MDS 9000 Caching Services Modules. Officials say that the combined offering gives customers a one-stop-shop from which to manage their data volumes, replicate data, and oversee point-in-time copies directly from the network.

The new enhancements include support for third-party midrange storage arrays and support for iSCSI, courtesy of Cisco's MDS 9000 IP Storage Services Module. Officials say that broader support for third-party storage arrays is a big help to companies implementing tired storage strategies.
Since its introduction in December of 2003, the combined solution has been a Fibre Channel-only play -- in spite of the fact that iSCSI-based storage solutions have been now been shipping for some time. In this respect, IBM and Cisco officials say, that product's support for iSCSI devices should give existing customers more options, and at the same time increase its attractiveness among prospective customers.

No new product introduction (or product update, for that matter) is complete without a word from an enthusiastic customer, and, in this regard, IBM and Cisco trotted out early adopter The University of Cologne, which they say was the first customer to tap the combined offering.

In a statement, Claus Kalle, manager of the university's systems department, said that the new IBM SAN Volume Controller for the MDS 9000 had helped his organization transition to a "vendor-independent management model." Kalle confirmed that the University of Cologne plans to make use of the new enhancements, as well: "We look forward to deploying the extended capabilities of the solution, which we expect will further maximize our return on investment, improve personnel productivity and increase application availability." -Stephen Swoyer