Vendors rally behind SNIA standards
Vendors rally behind SNIA standards
IBM, Veritas Software, Hitachi and Sun Microsystems have joined to spruik for standards for interoperability between storage management applications overseen by the Storage Networking Industry Association.
The standards are known collectively as the Common Information Model (CIM), comprising a technology called Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and the set of specifications formerly known as Bluefin, now called the Storage Management Initiative (SMI).
The four vendors said they would engage in joint interoperability testing of new versions of their products which conform to the CIM standards, with projected release dates for compliant products in 2003.
The vendor grouping, which had a large say in how the standards were developed by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), invited other vendors to join their testing efforts, but imposed a list of conditions: that CIM-compliant products be shipped in 2003, that the vendors support the standards, and that they make available to competitors their CIM Providers, which are software agents defined by the SMI specification.
Sun was the first to roll out a CIM-compliant product, having included the feature in its StorEdge Enterprise Storage Manager released in August. Hitachi said it would follow by the end of the year within the HiCommand Management Framework of its Hitachi Data Systems subsidiary. IBM and Veritas also promised to add CIM compliance to their hardware and software products during 2003, with IBM saying its disk drives and Tivoli applications would be the main carriers of the technology, while Veritas said its SANPoint Control and SANPoint Control applications would be among those to gain compliance.
All four companies are expected to participate in a demonstration of CIM-compliant test devices at the upcoming Storage Networking World show in Florida during October.
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