Storage Management standards – give me a break!
Posted in General, Storage Management, Advisor - Joe Disher by Joe DisherThere was a pretty good showing of support for SMI-S at SNW this past week. Even though it all looked good and all the vendors seemed to have ample amounts of love to pass around to one another, my gut keeps telling me that it’s all a ruse. After all of the efforts over the years to agree on a standard with really no end result that the end users can see, hear, feel and touch – how could we really think that a standard could ever possibly prevail?
Here’s some evidence to back up my theory:
Exhibit A: For a while I had hope due to folks like AppIQ that seemed to have found a way to remain vendor agnostic – but wait! In swoops HP (see HP announcement ) to gobble them up. This is potentially good for HP customers, but what if you don’t have HP gear? Does anyone really think that HP will push the AppIQ team to continue to be vendor agnostic? I don’t think so.
Exhibit B: There was a significant amount of buzz at SNW that SMI-S has gone away from being an open standard that everyone could easily develop to, to a standard that only the big companies with lots of engineering horsepower can develop to, thus locking out all the innovative little guys from having a piece of the pie. This tactic will only serve those that can afford to develop to this now hefty standard and any innovative folks will have a tough time really competing. Sound like a standard to you? Not to me!
Exhibit C: This morning I was cruising around SearchStorage and found an article talking about IBM inviting EMC to play in their new sandbox for the development of open source standards-based storage management middleware. On the surface it all sounds good. Then I read the list of vendors already part of this new group are: Brocade Communication Systems Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Computer Associates International Inc., Engenio Information Technologies, Fujitsu Ltd., McData Corp., Network Appliance Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. EMC appears to be thinking about it. See any small storage management startups in that lineup? Hmmmm? The article claims that the group will leverage existing standards such as SMI-S. If that’s true where is HP/AppIQ in that list? How about Symantec/Veritas? There’s a couple of big companies (supposedly) dedicated to SMI-S that are not part of this new “standard” generating group. I don’t get it.
To me it all looks like a lot of talk about things that will never really benefit the masses. Sure their will be some happy customers that have themselves wrapped around specific vendors that claim to support the “standard”, but in the end, I think the big gorillas in storage will continue to position the technology and standards so that only they can really benefit.
Blog ya later!
Joe
October 29th, 2005 at 6:45 am
Joe - you miss the point and don’t get the marketplace. SMI-S is a standard - soon to be published by ANSI and later ISO. You looking too short term - it takes 5-7 years for a standard to happen in the industry.
Yes the big guys are involved because their customers (Fortune 500) are telling them that they want a standards based implementation of storage management to address the cost issue.
Most of the little guys don’t do storage management - at least that is what I find. I think Microsoft is trying to address this market - but it will take a couple of years.
The majority of companies simply ingnore their storage until something doesn’t work. It is a lot like the way they treat automobiles. Storage management will go the same route - a little flashy light will tell you when it is time to replace a failed part. Achieving this state of storage will take time and lots of virtualization. So if you look at where the hot hot hot activity is in storage management it is in figuring out how to manage virtualization. Rememeber that old byline - Everything fails - Got Managment.
Larry
November 1st, 2005 at 12:02 pm
Larry-
Absolutely right about standards and the amount of time it takes for them to really take hold - the problem and the point I was trying to make is that when big companies get their sales and marketing engines involved they look to how to build their profits. They become self-serving with their standards efforts - and furthermore, if they are not all on the same page the standard can get very diluted.
I will go with you on the SMI-S efforts though. If left to the technical brain-share of the storage industry, we would most certainly have a shot at some consistent and usable standard for the masses - not just the select few that can afford it. I’m worried about the recent announcements on other management initiatives that are to leverage SMI-S however.
If you look at the many articles on the new Aperi initiative being pushed by IBM the general view is that it’s just another way to dilute the total standardization effort. Check out this article at ComputerWorld for another perspective on Aperi.
I’m optimistic that this initiative will have some success, but I am jaded by the ulterior motives of the big vendors throwing their weight around.
When the standard is actually ported to real storage management products, that don’t cost more than the storage hardware itself, then maybe there will be an honest-to-goodness chance for a standard that ALL customers can benefit from. Having a storage management budget that eclipses the storage hardware budget won’t do it though - which is, again, why having the big vendors team up to “enhance” the already in motion SMI-S standard seems counter-productive.
Great debate! Time will tell! I guess we’ll see in 5-7 years.
Joe