NetApp brushes up change management tool

On the heels of the addition of a change management tool to Symantec’s CommandCentral SRM software, NetApp last week released version 5.0 of SANScreen, the change management application it acquired by buying Onaro.

Among the updates, according to an email from Steve Cohen, Product Marketing Manager for SANscreen:

• More Heterogeneous Support - HDS USP, and EMC CLARiiON (performance) and EMC Celerra (discovery). SANscreen was built to provide heterogeneous visibility and this concept remains core to our values
• Data Warehouse and embedded business intelligence engine based on IBM’s Cognos. This allows rollup of multiple SANscreen sites into a single Data Warehouse for global storage infrastructures, and offers a possible interface to SQL-accessible 3rd party apps including change management databases (CMDBs) for the overall data center. New custom reporting from data warehouse includes storage chargeback.
• VMware vCenter Plug-in - SANscreen data is now available within vCenter, so server teams can use one tool to manage their environment.
• iSCSI Support - Single console to monitor multi-protocol environments.

While reporting tools have been steadily adding features and are now available from major vendors, this category of products remains a tough sell, according to analysts. For more on that, see our coverage of Symantec’s CommandCentral announcement.