Storage Industry Leaders to Form Open Source Community; IBM, Sun and Partners Intend to Donate Storage Infrastructure Management Technology to Help Establish Community

Brocade Communication Systems, Cisco Systems, Inc.,Computer Associates International, Inc., Engenio InformationTechnologies, Fujitsu Limited, IBM Corporation, McDATA Corporation,Network Appliance, Inc. and Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announcedtheir intent to form a new open source community, initially workingunder the project name Aperi, to give customers more choices fordeploying open-standards-based storage infrastructure software. Theorganization plans to develop a common storage software managementplatform that will give customers greater flexibility in the way theymanage their storage environments.

Aperi - derived from the Latin word for "to open" -- will take anopen approach to build a common platform for managing all brands ofstorage systems, with community members contributing code and takingadvantage of a common platform for building storage softwareapplications.

Previous storage industry group initiatives have focused onestablishing standards but not collaborating to develop an opensource-based platform to manage storage devices.

Members of the community, which will be managed by an independent,non-profit, multi-vendor organization, will work together to evolvethe platform, which will be available free-of-charge. The consortiumsoon will announce details about the organization, including themulti-vendor board of directors.

At first, IBM, Sun and the other partners plan to donate part oftheir storage infrastructure management technology to the open sourcecommunity. Other members will have the option to also donate a portionof their intellectual property, so that collectively the group canadvance the platform and encourage developers to write storagemanagement software based on the platform.

Providing more flexibility for storage management provides a rangeof benefits to customers, who face storage complexity and staffshortages and lack a standard way to manage information through itslifecycle. By standardizing on a common software infrastructureplatform, customers will be able to choose from a greater range ofstorage management products. In addition, doing so could helpeliminate the need to "rip and replace" storage management softwarewhen purchasing new hardware or applications, and reduce trainingrequirements for storage operations teams.

Similarly, the community will help customers by enabling storagevendors to efficiently develop a management platform within an opensource-based consortium framework, while focusing on developing newcapabilities that enhance their own storage products.

The community will build upon existing open storage standards,including the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) StorageManagement Initiative Specification (SMI-S), which develops andstandardizes interoperable storage management technologies for storagehardware interfaces.

More information can be found at www.ibm.com/storage/community.

Brocade

"Brocade has a history of leadership in developing industrystandards and a commitment to interoperability in SAN infrastructure,"said Dan Crain, Chief Technology Officer, Brocade CommunicationsSystems, Inc. "The new open source community for storage applicationsdevelopers will build on and validate the success of organizationssuch as SNIA and SMI-S. We envision that in the long run, the resultwill be more powerful tools to reduce cost and complexity in the datacenter."

Cisco

"Cisco is committed to supporting and furthering industry effortsthat create more flexibility and choice, reduce costs, simplifymanagement, and advance industry standards," said Tom Edsall, VicePresident and General Manager, Data Center Switching Business Unit,Cisco Systems, Inc.

Computer Associates

"CA has a strong track record of support for the cooperativedevelopment of storage industry standards and enterprise-class opensource business solutions," said Sam Greenblatt, senior vicepresident, technology, at CA. "This new initiative will provide sorelyneeded open source standards for managing storage resources across theenterprise - where burgeoning volumes of data and complex,heterogeneous infrastructure present IT organizations with anincreasingly daunting challenge."

Engenio

"The formation of the Open Source Storage Community andestablishment of a common storage software management platform is awin-win for both customers and vendors," said Phil Bullinger, SeniorVice President and General Manager, Engenio. "Storage companies arenow free to focus all of their resources on developing innovativestorage management solutions based on a common platform. Theinteroperability of solutions from the leading storage companiesprovides customers with freedom of choice and peace of mind to knowthat they have complete flexibility when managing their storageenvironments."

Fujitsu

"Fujitsu has a long history of providing customers with storage,server and software solutions and contributing to the establishment ofopen standards in the IT industry. We strongly support the work of theopen source community to establish an open source framework forstorage management software in multi-vendor environments, as webelieve this will both benefit the customer and serve to spur thegrowth of the industry as a whole," said Mitsuhiro Hashimoto, SeniorVice President, Software Unit, Fujitsu Limited. "We believe that thesuccess of the open source community in achieving this goal is ofcritical importance, as this will also serve as a foundation forautonomic system management and other innovative data centersolutions."

IBM

"IBM has a long history in promoting open standards across bothhardware and software," said Andy Monshaw, General Manager of Storage,IBM. "This new open source community for the storage industry willhelp customers to dramatically lower the complexity involved inimplementing storage solutions by providing customers more choices inselecting and deploying best storage products, regardless of vendor."

McDATA

"Interoperability and open systems are fundamental pillars uponwhich McDATA has built its business - evident by our founding rolesand decades of involvement in SNIA, FCIA and other standardsorganizations," said John Kelley, chairman, president and CEO, McDATA."We support the community as it will allow customers a high degree ofchoice and interoperability when it comes to their storagerequirements."

Network Appliance

"This community is designed to help customers by enabling vendorsto focus their development on value added storage managementfunctionality rather than competing management platforms," saidPatrick Rogers, Vice President of Products and Partners, NetworkAppliance. "NetApp has been a big advocate of open, standards-basedstorage for a long time--our pioneering work in NFS, CIFS, NDMP, andother technologies attests to that history, as does our product linewhich has been developed over the years with heterogeneous storagesupport as a top priority. Participating actively in this communitywill help us continue to focus on customer priorities--ease of datamanagement and unmatched simplicity that deliver superior ROI andlower costs."

Sun Microsystems

"As a leader in driving Open Source communities, Sun is veryinterested the development of open source storage and data managementsolutions and intends to participate in a community that is dedicatedto this type of development," said Randy Kerns, VP Strategy andPlanning, Data Management Group, Sun Microsystems. "Sun will beworking with all of its partners to move toward standards based andopen source solutions."

State Street Global Advisors

"Developing on the SMI-S foundation, the community has theopportunity to deliver the best of breed instrumentation,heterogeneity, and value that the end user community has been seekingfor storage based (SAN and NAS) solutions." said Tom Dever, SeniorStorage Engineer, State Street Global Advisors. "Furthermore, thisinitiative may help close the gap between today's hardware andmaturing storage services such as ILM, virtualization, and CDP."

University of California, Berkeley

"Storage vendors have taken a significant step forward today tounite under a common goal of providing flexibility, simplicity,efficiency and common standards for customers," said David Patterson,Pardee Professor of Computer Science at U.C. Berkeley and President ofthe Association of Computing Machinery. "Collaboration at this levelis the only way we will manage and overcome the information explosionwe are seeing today."