EMC and Dell Posit New Storage Standard

Month Date, 2006: The Storage Bridge Bay Working Group (SBB) is launched this week with EMC, Dell and LSI Logic Group with a view to changing the way that storage controller cards interface with storage disks. Technology or Politics?

Six months after it was left out in the cold by Brocade Communication Systems, Computer Associates International, Cisco Systems, Engenio Information Technologies, Fujitsu Limited, McDATA Corporation, Network Appliance and Sun Microsystems' 'Aperi' "open source" consortium, EMC and two of its key partners have formed a new working group to provide interoperability for storage.

The team-up with Dell comes in the same week as EMC and Microsoft announced an expansion in their Microsoft Server + EMC storage marriage - which includes a very pointed message regarding IBM. The third keypoint in the Microsoft/EMC alliance states:

' Accelerated Lotus Notes to Exchange Migration - Migration assessment, design and implementation services to help Lotus Notes customers migrate to Exchange Server 2003 on an optimized EMC information infrastructure.'

The Dell/LSI/EMC consortium - SBB - is firmly placed in the hardware arena however. According to the press release: "

The Storage Bridge Bay Working Group (SBB) is a cooperative, non-profit organization created to drive standardization in entry-level external storage. The SBB will define mechanical and electrical interface requirements between storage arrays and the controller card that give the array its identity - identities such as JBOD (just a bunch of disks) , RAID (redundant array of independent disks), iSCSI, Fibre Channel SAN and NAS (networked attached storage).  As a result, a storage controller card based on the SBB specification will be able to fit, connect and electrically operate within a SBB-compliant storage array.

' The SBB standard will simplify the engineering and design process for independent hardware vendors (IHVs) and system vendors. With standardized SBB technology, IHVs can create a single controller design that is compatible with a number of disk enclosures, lowering development costs. With shortened development cycles enabled by the SBB standard, system vendors can devote more of their efforts on innovation and driving simplicity. The SBB standard will speed the delivery of emerging storage technologies, such as iSCSI (Internet small computer systems interface), SAS (serial attached SCSI), archiving and virtual tape libraries.'

What is as interesting about the announcement and the proposed SBB 'standard' as its apparently groundbreaking approach to storage is that there is no mention of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

SNIA is widely accepted as being the core industry body for the proposal and ratification of storage and storage management standards. Among SNIA's "Large Voting Members" are EMC and Dell but also, Brocade, IBM, Sun and Cisco.

Classifying the SBB is a splinter group from SNIA; a serious project aimed at making the lives of consumers and manufacturers easier, or yet more politics in what is a mightily lucrative market that is only going to expand is difficult at this early stage. What is apparent, however, is that EMC is not taking a backseat in the battle for storage.

SBB - a good idea or another techie fork in the road to interoperabilty? Comment on this story.

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