First Person: Will SMI-S Find Its Footing?

The trick is to get hardware and software vendors to ante up the time and effort required to build providers into their products, in a manner consistent with the extensible CIM metamodel. Otherwise, the exercise will be as much of a pain as API-dependent management strategies.

After a year and a half of trying to account for every peculiarity of every vendor's product, SMI developers turned a kludge into a more service-oriented model, buying off dissent by inviting vendors with exceptions to write their own extensions. Thus far, few extensions have appeared--and perhaps that's a good thing.

SMI-S backers are now confronting a bigger issue. How do they translate an unprecedented level of storage-vendor cooperation on spec development into an equally unprecedented level of storage-vendor participation in spec implementation?

Skeptics Abound

There's no easy answer. And it doesn't help that first-generation CIM advocates promised things the technology couldn't deliver, alienating vendors in the process. Many of those vendors continue to dismiss SMI-S as half-baked, too. "We don't exactly see customers lining up around the building to buy this stuff," one of them told me recently.So while some hardware vendors--including EMC, Hitachi and Sun--have signed up to build SMI-S providers for their products, many remain reluctant. Ditto for software vendors. Indeed, Microsoft's absence hangs like an ominous cloud over SMI meetings, though Microsoft's embrace of object-oriented file systems in its next-generation operating system, code-named Longhorn, could develop into a natural extension of the SMI-S management model.

The holdouts will join in only if users start demanding their participation. Yes, the SNIA is working up some new presentations and outreach programs to educate and excite both vendors and consumers (see www.snia.org/education/tutorials). But, truth be told, SMI advocates may need to go outside the SNIA to get the support they need to bring SMI-S to life.

Jon William Toigo is a contributing editor to Storage Pipeline, CEO of storage consultancy Toigo Partners International, and founder and chairman of the Data Management Institute. Write to him at [email protected].