>Hi SM*rs  I am under considerable pressure to pull ADSM out and install an
>alternative tool.  The reasoning behind this being response and recovery
>times of large servers are unacceptable and the non-existence of HSM type
>functionality for NT clients.

John - We'd need specifics to better gauge your situation and help out,
       but on the surface of it, it sounds like management is looking for
alternative deck chairs for a ship without enough horsepower.  You can
optimize networking and robotics to substantially boost performance over
an "ordinary" configuration.  Choice in *SM policies and storage pools can
greatly enhance restoral times.  And deploying TSM with its new features
can improve things over what ADSM offers.  (You can offer to "pull ADSM out
and install an alternative tool" called TSM).  It's all a matter of how
serious managment is in how much $$$ it wants to commit to accomplish this.
What you're experiencing with them is what traditionally happens when
objectives are not well defined, at which point it's easy to say that the
deployed product doesn't measure up to expectations that were fuzzy to begin
with.
    See the list archives for historic comparision of *SM to competing
products.  Your shop can go ahead with a competitor, but I doubt that the end
result will overall be a dramatic boost.  It will probably just be a change.
If you feel overwhelmed with the analysis or that the information to be gotten
via ADSM-L is insufficient, by all means recommend that the services of a
storage consultant be obtained to review the big picture at your shop.

        Richard Sims, BU