Sun Microsystems' Sun StorEdge products, from enterprise to workgroup offerings, have passed the Storage Networking Industry Association Conformance Testing Program (SNIA-CTP). This validates Sun's efforts to deliver interoperability and the resulting customer benefits of reduced cost and complexity through the implementation of the SMI-S in its storage products.

To date, the Sun StorEdge 3510 Fibre Channel array and the Sun StorEdge 9900 family of products have passed the conformance test. These results quickly follow Sun's announced alliance with AppIQ to deliver heterogeneous storage management solutions based on the SMI-S. Additionally, Sun is committed to having all future Sun StorEdge products and partner products conform to the specification.

"Customers are no longer focused on speeds and feeds - they're in need of real solutions that meet today's pressing business issues such as cutting IT infrastructure expenditures and protecting existing data center investments," stated Mark Canepa, executive vice president of Sun Network Storage. "By leveraging open standards such as the SMI-S, Sun is working to ensure that we're able to quickly market solutions that help meet customer requirements for interoperability across their enterprise."

The SMI-S is the work of the SNIA Storage Management Initiative (SMI) and delivers a reliable, tested interface that allows storage management systems to identify, classify, monitor and control physical and logical storage resources. Over the last two years, the specification has been developed through the contributions of the industry's top engineers - including those at Sun - and is currently going through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) process to become recognized as an official standard.

Sun is committed to developing open systems and working with standards. Sun's leadership in the SMI is exemplified by Ray Dunn, marketing manager for Sun Network Storage, who is the current chair of the Storage Management Forum (SMF) and also a member of the SNIA Board of Directors, and Sun Senior Engineer Mark Carlson, chairman of the SMI Technical Steering Group and a recognized leader of the SMI-S development effort. Additionally, a team of Sun Network Storage engineers contributes to the development of the SMI-S by participating in the SNIA technical work groups and implementing the SMI-S into Sun's storage solutions.

Sun's focus on leveraging the SMI-S through its entire product line is vital to the delivery of its end-to-end solutions. Currently, in the SNIA's Interoperability and Solutions Demo, Sun is demonstrating its Sun StorEdge 3510 Fibre Channel array, the Sun StorEdge 6320 system, Sun StorEdge Enterprise Storage Management (ESM) software, and the Sun StorEdge Fast Restore for Files solution as well as other solutions that help enable enterprise continuity, email archiving and data management.