Jamie Gruener's position on API sharing

Jamie Gruener Senior Analyst of Enterprise Computing and Networking at Yankee Group In his role at Yankee Group, Jamie covers the storage market and is responsible for delivering expert insight on storage networking standards and emerging storage technologies. His areas of expertise include SAN management and virtualization. His research also covers carrier integration of storage technology, content distribution, server technologies and the storage service provider market.

QUESTION: What is your position of API sharing? Is it really gong to make the difference in making multi-vendor shops easier to manage or is it just a way for vendors to offer "compatibility" to customers?

ANSWER: API sharing is more an interim, good faith step to doing interoperability. It is important that vendors are willing to do this but keep in mind that much of this is more marketing and less actual functionality. The problem is that until BlueFin/CIM (the new, pending storage management standard) is widely deployed by vendors, interoperability will be based on the vendor. I think it will make things a little easier for customers but customers need to grill vendors on what this "interoperability" really gives them. In other words, mileage will vary.