Storage Management Standard Takes a Big Step Forward

The Storage Networking Industry Association’s Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) is on a fast track to becoming an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard.

The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) has agreed to take SMI-S, which helps storage products from different vendors function together under one manageable interface, through the INCITS Fast Track process. The process is reserved for specifications that have already gone through rigorous technical review, and is expected to result in SMI-S becoming an official ANSI standard in the second quarter of 2004.

“This moves SMI-S toward becoming a true standard, which SNIA cannot do on their own, as they are not accredited as a standards body,” says Nancy Marrone-Hurley, senior analyst at Enterprise Storage Group. “Once a specification becomes a standard, it is more apt to be adopted by the industry. The fast track attests that INCITS believes that the SNIA SMI-S specification was well structured and does not need much work in order to become an ANSI standard.”

SNIA views the strategic alliance with INCITS as “a significant milestone,” according to SNIA chair Sheila Childs. “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.”

Citing the years of work that have gone into the interoperability standard by more than 30 companies, INCITS Executive Director Pat Morris says, “It is
time to use the INCITS Fast Track process so we will have an American National standard within months.”

SMI-S 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, steps that will go beyond standardizing management of SANs to include NAS, iSCSI, and other storage networking technologies.

The Storage Management Initiative also includes extensive interoperability testing in SNIA’s SMI-Lab, 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,”
SNIA says.

Back to Enterprise Storage Forum

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  December 16, 2020

• AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  December 11, 2020

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020