NEW YORK - Start-up MonoSphere last week unveiled software that it says outshines existing storage management tools by enabling companies to better gauge how much storage capacity they will need.

The company, which launched its Windows-based product at the Storage Decisions conference, says its predictive modeling technology sets the software apart from traditional resource management offerings, such as those from recent HP acquisition AppIQ.

The Redwood City, Calif., company's Storage Horizon software also is designed to free up storage administrators from relying on spreadsheets and complicated scripts to estimate needed storage capacity.

"We've had capacity planning tools on the mainframe for years. People wouldn't even think about running an IT shop without them," says Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group. "In open systems, we use a crystal ball and prayers. If MonoSphere's Storage Horizon works as advertised, it will shed light where there has only been darkness."

Storage Horizon consists of four components: a dashboard; a workbench; a query tool; and a reporting module. The dashboard is a single pane watch-list of items that have exceeded thresholds an IT administrator has set, notifications and action-based alerts. The workbench allows customers to discover storage resources and set up logical groups of storage based on application requirements or business groups within the organization.

The query tool lets users define search parameters and look for storage that is under-utilized. For instance, an IT administrator could build a query that will show the storage allocated across four data centers for an Oracle financial application. A forecast engine then lets the administrator predict how much extra storage capacity will be needed in the future.

Storage Horizon can be compared to software from Concord Communications, a company recently acquired by Computer Associates. Concord's eHealth application monitors and reports on the health and performance of networks.

Storage Horizon manages storage resources on direct-attached, network-attached and storage-area networks in Linux, Windows, Solaris and AIX environments. It conforms to the Windows Management Interface, SNMP and the Storage Management Interface specification.

MonoSphere, formed in 2001, has raised $30 million in funding.

Storage Horizon is priced by the number of terabytes of storage under management. A license that covers 50T bytes starts at $50,000.