However, Joseph Martins, an analyst for Data Mobility Group, Nashua, N.H., said he was hoping that major storage vendors such as HP would start providing information management functionality rather than just the storage capacity itself, such as providing an information management library, performing versioning and letting users check files in and out.

Martins said he would like features to be available in content management systems, such as EMC Corp.'s Documentum, to trickle down to storage systems.

HP is also announcing the StorageWorks Virtual Library System 300 Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) Gateway, which provides a more capacity than the company's existing 1000i VLS and 6000 VLS, said Kyle Fitze, director of SAN marketing for HP's StorageWorks division. Users combine the gateway product with EVA storage arrays to create a virtual tape library, Fitze said.

Virtual tape libraries reduce backup windows by performing disk-to-disk backups before offloading data to tape media, which is considerably slower. They also improve restore speeds because copies of the data can be kept on the backup disk for a specified period of time.

The VLS 300 supports up to six EVA storage arrays for a total of 500TB of disk capacity, said Fitze. By comparison, the existing VLS 6000 product, which will continue to be sold, scales to 70TB, he said. This storage capacity can appear to servers to be up to 128 tape libraries and up to 1,024 tape drives, he said. There can be up to eight gateway nodes, he said.