Compaq cruises into test-drive networks

Compaq opened a storage engineering centre in Holland last week, so customers can "test-drive" technologies such as San and NAS before shelling out cash for expensive equipment.

The PC and storage company also announced ENSA-2, an extension to its storage management vision. This new architecture promises to enhance flexibility and lower costs through a more creative use of stored data.

The new storage centre will cater for the whole of Europe from Nijmegen in Holland, and includes some 50 mid-range servers to mimic a real network environment from a variety of vendors, including rival products from IBM and Sun.

Compaq's vice-president and general manager enterprise business EMEA, Walid Moneimne, said the centre chose a non-proprietary setup. "We would like to see Compaq everywhere, but today's networks are heterogeneous," he said.

The test environment can be changed to any combination of hardware, OS, cable lengths, fabric switches and storage techniques by switching a few plugs. This creates an off-site replica of a network configuration to test performance without disrupting business processes and users.

Roger Archibald, vice-president of the enterprise storage array division at Compaq, said the storage centre shuns a glossy image that would draw in CEOs. Instead, it aims to focus on the engineering aspect of storage, to attract operational network managers.

"Network managers are the people who put their jobs on the line when they decide to move to a different architecture," he said. "They should try storage equipment before they buy it."