The trick is to get hardware and software vendors to ante up the time and effort required to build providers into their products, in a manner consistent with the extensible CIM metamodel. Otherwise, the exercise will be as much of a pain as API-dependent management strategies.
After a year and a half of trying to account for every peculiarity of every vendor's product, SMI developers turned a kludge into a more service-oriented model, buying off dissent by inviting vendors with exceptions to write their own extensions. Thus far, few extensions have appeared--and perhaps that's a good thing.
SMI-S backers are now confronting a bigger issue. How do they translate an unprecedented level of storage-vendor cooperation on spec development into an equally unprecedented level of storage-vendor participation in spec implementation?
Skeptics Abound
There's no easy answer. And it doesn't help that first-generation CIM advocates promised things the technology couldn't deliver, alienating vendors in the process. Many of those vendors continue to dismiss SMI-S as half-baked, too. "We don't exactly see customers lining up around the building to buy this stuff," one of them told me recently.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
