Martins said he would like features to be available in content management systems, such as EMC'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. Fitz said there can be up to eight gateway nodes, he said.

The major advantage of HP's VLS enhancements is that, because the VLS 300 EVA Gateway is compatible with HP's existing 1000i and 6000 VLS systems, users get access to the increased capacity and performance levels without having to make major changes in their other processes and procedures.