IBM has begun the roll-out of version 5.4 of its Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), with a "basic" client for Microsoft's new OS, and support for Intel-chipped Macs.

TSM is IBM's archiving, backup and compliance effort. It was among the first in the market to support encryption; the new version improves the key management tools, simplifying the task for storage admins. IBM is pushing the business continuity angle with claims of shorter downtime for TSM 5.4 through its pooling of the most current data and use of backup "snapshots".

The software supports the TS1120 hardware-based tape encrytion which IBM shipped in September. TSM will generate key and communicate encryption keys to the tape drives. Encryption was also added to the LTO-4 standard launched in the new year.

In a further nod to the privacy and compliance collywobbles which take up much of IT directors' time these days, IBM has built in a "data shredding" function, which automatically shreds the image left in a data pool designated sensitive when it it is moved from that pool.

Its a big day for storage management software; Symantec's Enterprise Vault 7.0 also launched today. ®