Show organizer Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is optimistic that the management standard will be snapped up quickly. [Ed. note: Of course, its whole raison d'tre is to be optimistic about things like this.] Roger Reich, senior technical director at Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) and chairman of SNIA's Storage Management Initiative, says the organization expects that virtually all new storage networking products will use the SMI-S standard by 2005.
Meanwhile, he says, standard-based management tools are already under development. Veritas, for instance, is currently building management products on top of four different CIM-based products. "Our intent is to ship this year," says Reich. Other companies implementing the standards are in the thick of development: "They're finding bugs in the standards that they could only find if they were implementing them in products."
Not everyone is as confident about the near-term prospects of storage management standards. The main complaint from skeptical software management vendors is that the standards are not comprehensive enough. "We have to support such a large number of platforms that the standards don't support them all," says Richard Ruskin, VP of sales at SAN management software startup Storability Inc. "What we see for the foreseeable future is a parallel effort."
Others also believe industry-wide adoption of the standard may take a while. "An initiative around storage management is a great development," says Ahmed Zamer, product line manager at Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC). But, he adds, "Things are still in early stages. It would probably take another one to two years for things to hit the market."
There is some validity to the complaint that SMI-S doesn't cover a lot today, admits Sheila Childs, chair of SNIA's board of directors and a VP at Legato Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: LGTO). "But hey, it's version 1," she says. "Now we're going to implement more stuff."
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
