COMPANIES are expanding. Company files are accumulating. There is a growing demand for additional servers to store burgeoning data. Companies are seeing the need to off-load their servers to make it easier for them to manage capacity and address the management of storage.

According to Compaq Corp, it has been receiving this feedback from Filipino customers.

Storage provider Compaq sees this as a call to simplify the use of storage in the enterprise mainly because operations are becoming complex, server numbers are growing and the issue of capacity management is tied up to the servers. A server has slots for cards that connect to the storage. The number of slots a server has is also limited. If ever all the slots have been used up and the storage is growing, then a company needs a bigger server.

With these challenges facing companies, Compaq Computer Philippines recently introduced in the local market its Enterprise Network Storage Architecture (Ensa) concept to address storage management needs.

Regino Joel B. Josol, Compaq Philippines product marketing manager for high-performance servers, said that Compaq sees it best to develop an architecture that will allow storage management with various platforms using only one scale set. It covers all platforms from Windows NT, Unix, Novell NetWare, SCO and OpenVMS.

Another Compaq vision, said Josol, is to take the storage out of the server and put it in the network, thus making the storage network-based.

Josol explained that this is done so that in cases when other servers break down, one can still access his or her file through other servers because the files in the storage are not specifically hooked in one server.

''So if you are used to working on a local area network (LAN), for example, you know that this is a good thing because you can now share your resources,'' he said.

By attempting to do away with capacity, storage management and other concerns, Compaq introduces the Data Replication Manager, where a data is replicated in a Wide Area Network (WAN) setup by mirroring the data or peer-to-peer copy through fiber network. Fiber network has a range of 10 to 40 km. (Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), on the other hand, is for unlimited connections.) Josol added that nonstop operating industries like banks and telecommunications would need this type of technology.

''Many customers in the Philippines are shifting to this trend now because if something happens to their data in their Manila branch or Makati branch, for instance, what happens with all the customer data they have?''

Compaq also introduces the Enterprise Volume Manager (EVM), a host-based application software that manages controller-based clone and snapshot operations. Compaq assures that the clone and snapshots are point-in-time copy functions that can be used to minimize downtime required for system backups and data migration activities.

Josol said this technology is for customers who cannot afford DRM, since lease lines are expensive.

Under the normal setup, disks could not be backed up if users are logged on to the server, explained Josol. EVM enables users to continue with the work while clones are being made.