The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has created a new Storage Management Initiative (SMI) forum to help speed up the adoption of storage management technology. SMI is the fifth forum that SNIA has formed with the goal of improving storage interoperability and adoption of new technology. The SMI Forum is also one of many initiatives taking place in the industry with the goal of furthering storage management technology standards. Although the buzz surrounding storage management initiatives has been enormous, SNIA's initiatives have generated a lot of press but few results.
The forum will focus on the promotion of SNIA's SMI Specification for Storage Area Network (SAN)-based storage management, which is based on the Bluefin specification. The forum's goal is to have 60 percent of vendors' products compliant with the SMI Specification by 2004 and 100 percent compliance by 2005. Membership is open to all members of the association. Companies expected to join include Agile Storage, AppIQ, BMC Software, Brocade Communications Systems, CommVault Systems, Computer Associates (CA), Cranialogic, CreekPath Systems, EMC, Emulex, Fujitsu Softek, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), IBM, Inrange Technologies, Intel, InterSAN, LSI Logic Storage Systems, McDATA, Network Appliance (NetApp), Storability Software, StorageNetworks, Storage Technology (StorageTek), Sun Microsystems, VERITAS Software, and Vicom Systems.
http://www.snia.org/news/press_releases/2002/2002_11_04_smi.pdf
http://www.snia.org
