Hewlett-Packard and IBM have agreed to allow a degree of
interoperability between their storage products, in a move which
they say will advance the cause of open standards in storage.
Analysts, however, are more sceptical, writes Antony Adshead.
The companies, which are involved in the Bluefin and Common
Information Model (CIM) initiatives to provide standards-based
storage management platform, will cross-licence application
programming and command line interfaces. The Bluefin and CIM
initiatives aim to provide a common management interface for
storage components in storage area networks, which are partially
separate networks dedicated to data storage in enterprise computing
environments.
Brian Truskowski, chief technology officer for IBM Storage Systems,
said, "Suppliers that make a bet on proprietary approaches over
industry standards will lose."
The deal is typical of those seen recently in the storage market,
according to Ovum analyst Graham Titterington. "We have been seeing
many such agreements but what we have is a collection of bilateral
agreements and no great progress towards common standards in
storage," he said.
Titterington added that interoperability testing regularly accounts
for about 10% of the cost of implementing storage, so supplier
disagreements represent a negligible cost.
Achieving interoperability between different equipment
manufacturers' storage media - and between the media and storage
management software - is a goal that deeply divides suppliers. Most
claim to have full interoperability between their own and other
manufacturers' products, but the reality is less clear.
"There is a poorer state of co-operation in storage than most
sectors," said Titterington, "but there have been some initiatives,
such as Bluefin, so there is some hope."
n Storage management software supplier Fujitsu Softek has bet a
year's worth of licences on its users achieving a 25% increase in
storage utilisation.
It will guarantee that those who use Storage Manager on its own or
in combination with one of its other multi-supplier storage
management products will achieve the 25% increase in utilisation or
it will provide the free licences.