The SNIA and INCITS Announce Approval of a New American National Standard for Storage Management

ORLANDO, FL (October 26, 2004) — The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) announced today the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) has been approved as a new INCITS standard. The standard was approved by the INCITS executive board and has been designated as ANSI INCITS 388-2004, American National Standard for Information Technology Storage Management.

ANSI INCITS 388-2004 was developed through a collaborative effort by members of the SNIA representing a cross section of the industry. Today, the standard focuses on storage management of Storage Area Networks (SANs) and will be extended to include Network Attached Storage (NAS), Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) and other storage networking technologies.

"We are pleased that our collaboration with the SNIA has resulted in the adoption of a new INCITS and American National Standard for storage management," said Karen Higginbottom, chair of the INCITS executive board. "Due to the diligence of the SNIA in producing a quality specification and the streamlined INCITS fast-track process, we have produced this new standard which will serve as a catalyst for promoting management interoperability among multi-vendor components in storage networks. This has been a key concern for both vendors and end users for some time."

Tony DiCenzo, chair of the SNIA Standards Committee, added, "We are delighted to have worked with INCITS under the Fast Track program and excited to see the SMI-S become an American National Standard. We are committed to continuing our work with INCITS to take the standard forward to the ISO/IEC JTC 1 so that it can be adopted as an international
standard."

Vendor implementation of ANSI INCITS 388-2004 is supported by the SNIAs Storage Management test for conformance, as well as extensive interoperability testing of vendors' products in a dedicated lab housed in the associations Technology Center based in Colorado Springs, CO. The SNIA Conformance Testing Program (SNIA-CTP) validates that vendorspecific implementations of the specification conform to the standard and provides a critical building block to make multivendor storage environments simpler to implement and easier to manage. End users looking to ensure that a vendor's SMI-S implementation conforms to the new standard can look for officially badged and tested products or visit SNIA's Web site at www.snia.org.

The ANSI INCITS 388-2004 standard can be purchased through the INCITS Web site at www.incits.org.

About INCITS
The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) 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. Contact: INCITS Secretariat, Information Technology Industry Council, 1250 Eye St. NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005
(www.incits.org).

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 advancing the adoption of storage networks as complete and trusted solutions. 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 further information, visit http://www.snia.org.