Storage firms co-operate on interoperability

Vendors team up to to help resellers and customers.

Storage vendors are seeing the possibilities of storage interoperability, and are to join together to help resellers and customers.

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) launched its Supported Solutions Forum (SSF) last month and has already had an influx of members from the vendor community.

The SSF is a sub-committee of the SNIA, which has two main objectives, according to John Taylor, chairman of the UK sub-committee for SNIA Europe.

"We are trying to get all the storage component vendors to work together and eventually have a plug-and-play option. In addition, we are trying to get a single port of call for resellers and customers when something goes wrong with a storage area network," he said.

Gadzoox, ADIC, DataCore and StorageTek, which were already SNIA members, all joined the SSF earlier this month.

Steve Delmege, product marketing manager, Europe, Middle East & Africa, at StorageTek, said: "Our resellers will be able to promote products with the confidence of knowing that putting a solution together for the customer won't require any testing themselves, and that integration to meet requirements will be made easier."