SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. -- The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is building a consortium, essentially a subset of its membership, to improve multivendor storage management and interoperability.
Represented by some of the industry's leading storage and system vendors, this consortium includes Compaq, Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sequent, StorageTek, Sun, Brocade Communications, Legato and Veritas. The companies have banded together to dispel one of the major inhibitors to the adoption of storage area networks (SAN) - interoperability among products from different vendors.
The consortium will be announced this week.
EMC last month formed its own FibreAlliance, citing the slow progression of standards development. As reported in Network World, other organizations such as the Fibre Channel Association and the Fibre Channel Committee are also involved in the development of standards for open storage networking.
"The laundry list of players in this consortium is key. These vendors need to work together. If they don't, there will be problems," says Dave Hill, an analyst for the Aberdeen Group.
Another industry analyst has a different view. "It appears that these vendors are just renewing the vows they took in joining SNIA," says Anders Lofgren of Giga Information. His view is shared by at least one fibre channel storage vendor who notes, "Membership on this committee was a matter of raising your hand and you were in." Although the buy-in to this consortium was easy, the vendor admits that open interoperability standards will only help the industry.
Sandy Helsel of Crossroads, a manufacturer of a fibre channel-to-SCSI routers, adds that Crossroads has always seen interoperability as critical to SAN installations. Crossroads has developed a guide for its customers, that in partnership with HP, explains interoperability between Crossroads' router and the products of other manufacturers.
As part of this consortium, the SNIA will deliver standards, education and services to allow SANs to reach a broader market. Companies involved in the consortium will donate time, equipment and funds to make interoperability work. The consortium believes it can deliver results by midyear.
"Open standards are in and private alliances are out," says Jeff Allen, vice president of marketing for Sun's Network Storage Division. Sun has its own standard for storage management, dubbed StoreX, which sets out a series of rules necessary to work with Sun-based storage.
