Search /
Docfinder:
Advanced search  |  Help  |  Site map
RESEARCH CENTERS
SITE RESOURCES
Click for Layer 8! No, really, click NOW!
Networking for Small Business
TODAY'S NEWS
Android, Apple Own 80% of Global Smartphone Market; Microsoft's Share, 2.2%
Proposed New York Legislation Would Ban Anonymous Online Comments
Supercomputer to connect to 400PB of storage via Ethernet
Sales of unused IPv4 addresses gathering steam
Customizable cloud SLAs on the way, researchers predict
Google chairman pledges to fund Raspberry Pi availability in U.K. schools
Obama orders agencies to optimize Web content for mobile
Are CEOs getting the social media thing?
Managing Mobile Mania
Google's Android did not infringe Oracle patents, jury finds
HP to trim 27,000 jobs as part of restructuring program
VMware acquires desktop management company Wanova
Privacy advocates fear CISPA
Groups launch gigabit-per-second broadband project
Windows 8 touchscreen devices to be priced higher, Dell says
/

SAN vendors seek IT input

Today's breaking news
Send to a friendFeedback

Computerworld, 10/22/99

SEATTLE -- The announcement this week of the election of Larry Krantz as chairman of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) comes as the organization veers from its vendor-only focus and reaches out to information technology managers.

SNIA, said Krantz, who will remain a senior technologist at EMC Corp. in Hopkinton, Mass., "is no longer about vendors talking to vendors. We need to attract the IT community."

At the Storage Networking World conference held here this week, evidence of IT involvement was apparent in the makeup of the attendee list. Nearly 40% of the audience at the three-day event ending today were IT professionals. Previous SNIA gatherings have been attended almost exclusively by vendors "focused on technical standards," Krantz said.

This year's conference was produced by SNIAand Computerworld, with about a dozen corporate sponsors also backing the show.

IT managers' current interest in storage-area networks (SAN) is because standards have begun to solidify, said Edward Frymoyer, an analyst at emf Associates Inc., a market research firm in Half Moon Bay, Calif. "They don't want to get trapped in the old IBM model. They want SANs to be truly open."

According to Frymoyer, interest in SANs is growing, especially in "the early-adopter side of the IT mainstream."

Krantz welcomed IT participation, saying it would force SNIA "to focus on standards so they are less open to interpretation."

Interoperability, once the primary issue, showed progress at the conference, as competing vendors demonstrated how their equipment worked together on a single Fibre Channel network in a laboratory environment.

However, despite a demonstration at the conference of a multisite Common Information Model system, a proposed management standard, users remained concerned about the progress of SAN management.

Bob Adair, a vice president at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York, said, "In a network, bad things happen. In a SAN, management will be even more critical."

Vendors remain bullish about the technology and continue to push SAN-ready products into the market. Frymoyer said his company's market projections for growth of SAN-enabled equipment average 56% over the next five years, to more than $32 billion by 2003.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld online. Story copyright © 1999 All rights reserved.

RELATED LINKS

Feedback
Tell us your thoughts on this article or the issues it raises.


NWFusion offers more than 40 FREE technology-specific email newsletters in key network technology areas such as NSM, VPNs, Convergence, Security and more.
Click here to sign up!
New Event - WANs: Optimizing Your Network Now.
Hear from the experts about the innovations that are already starting to shake up the WAN world. Free Network World Technology Tour and Expo in Dallas, San Francisco, Washington DC, and New York.
Attend FREE
Your FREE Network World subscription will also include breaking news and information on wireless, storage, infrastructure, carriers and SPs, enterprise applications, videoconferencing, plus product reviews, technology insiders, management surveys and technology updates - GET IT NOW.