INCITS and The SNIA Team to Standardize Storage Management Interface

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Contacts:
Lynn Barra Karen Phillips
INCITS Secretariat Director of Public Relations & Marketing, SNIA
(202) 626-5739 (407) 323-2571

 Dan La Russo
 Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
 (303) 634-2632

The SNIA Teams with INCITS To Standardize Storage Management Interface

Action Puts SNIA Specification on Fast Track to Status as American National Standard

Washington DC (November 12, 2003) – The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) today announced they have reached agreement to take the SNIA Storage Management Initiative
Specification (SMI-S) through the INCITS Fast Track process. The process, reserved for specifications that have already gone through rigorous technical review, is expected to result in SMI-S becoming an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard in the second
quarter of 2004.

Sheila Childs, chair of the SNIA, said, "Our organization views the strategic alliance with INCITS as a significant milestone. The Storage Management Initiative Specification directly addresses the needs of storage users throughout the world for greater interoperability and lower
costs. Our partnership with INCITS is key to fulfilling our goal of standardization through a formal ANSI-accredited standards body, allowing vendors and users alike to adopt SMI-S compliant products with complete confidence.”

Pat Morris, Executive Director of INCITS, said, "The fundamental interoperability of multi-vendor components in storage networks has been a key concern for both vendors and end users. Work on the Storage Management Initiative Specification has been underway by a group of more than 30 companies and organizations through the SNIA for two years. It is time to use the INCITS Fast Track process so we will have an American National standard within months."

The Storage Management Interface Specification is the result of several years of collaborative effort by the SNIA members representing a cross section of storage manufacturers, integrators,

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OEMs and end users from around the world. The specification defines an open system standard application program interface (API), allowing applications to manage storage devices manufactured by all of the industry leaders. SMI-S 1.0 represents the first step of several
planned iterations of the specification to extend from standardizing storage management of SANs, to NAS, iSCSI and other storage networking technologies.

The SNIA’s Storage Management Initiative includes extensive interoperability testing in the association’s SMI-Lab, comprehensive education programs and tools for developers, and demonstrations of the new technology. These combined efforts have already resulted in a robust
specification that has been extensively field tested.

Roger Reich, chair of the SNIA’s SMI Committee, said “Having the SMI Specification become an ANSI standard is the first result in the SNIA’s Storage Management Initiative, announced in the summer 2002, and a significant step in the overall SNIA plan to address storage customer’s concern for storage management and interoperability.”

The SNIA Storage Management Initiative Specification and software are freely available for download from the SNIA Web site (http://www.SNIA.org).

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About INCITS
INCITS (www.incits.org) is the primary U.S. focus of standardization in the field of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) encompassing storage, processing, transfer, display, management, organization, and retrieval of information. As such, INCITS also serves as the American National Standards Institute's (ANSI) Technical Advisory Group for ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1. JTC 1 is responsible for International standardization in the field of information technology. INCITS is accredited by ANSI and operates under its rules, designed to ensure that voluntary standards are developed by the consensus of directly and materially affected interests. INCITS Executive Board of supplier and customer members includes Apple Computer, EIA, Farance Inc., Food Marketing Institute (FMI), Hewlett-Packard, IBM, ICCP, IEEE, Intel, Microsoft, Network Appliance, NIST, Office of the Secretary Defense /Science & Technology, Oracle, Panasonic Technologies, Purdue University, Sony Electronics, Sun Microsystems, the Uniform Code Council, and Unisys.

About the SNIA
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not-for-profit organization made up of more than 300 companies and individuals spanning virtually the entire storage industry. SNIA members share a common goal: to set the pace of the industry by ensuring that storage networks become efficient, complete, and trusted solutions across the IT community. To this end the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market. For information visit the SNIA Web site at http://www.snia.org.