Twelve months or more is a long time -- time enough for vendors to get cold feet or simply lose interest. Some of you were still in diapers when the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) first emerged to solve the world's system management problems via the Common Information Model (CIM). Does anyone here recall the Common Management Interface? The Distributed Management Environment? The Systems Management element of the Object Management Group? The Element Systems Spam Management Environment of the Distributed Spam Element Systems Distributed Element? To some extent, all of these were meant to solve at least some of the problems outlined by SNIA. Many of them were endorsed by some of the same vendors who showed up today -- HP, IBM, and Sun among them.
Most of these onetime problem-solving "standards" are, like aging rock stars from the sixties, either dead or unrecognizable. In every case, their demise was hastened by vendor infighting or lack of support.
The storage networking market is a family, yes, but like other technology market segments, it more closely resembles the Borgias than the Brady Bunch. Only if a standard saves vendors money will it survive. Until it does, all the playing nice in the world will amount to little more than disappointment for users desperate to solve network problems.
At least one vendor is positive the savings are there. This [SMI-S] will save a ton of money for us, says Jonathan Buckley, McDatas VP of software platforms. We have eight interfaces in the company now we have to support. This will save us a lot of engineering and testing.
We'll keep an open mind. But until the results start panning out in the form of live network deployments, we'll hold our applause. Show us the meeting of users that actually have achieved the promise of SMI-S.
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