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Technology Stocks : The New QLogic (ANCR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kerry Lee who wrote (23429)	7/20/1999 3:13:00 AM
From: GuinnessGuy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29386

Well, well - this seems to be big news: Top Fibre Channel Switch Vendors To Agree On Interoperability Could be key to opening SANs to the channel By Joseph F. Kovar Irvine, Calif. 7:55 PM EST Mon., July 19, 1999 Storage area networks (SANs) will take a big step forward Wednesday when the five leading Fibre Channel switch vendors are expected to announce an initiative to set up standards to ensure interoperability between their products. "This is the best thing to happen to SANs," said Ron Johnson, partner at Evaluator Group Inc., an Englewood, Colo.-based analyst firm. "Systems integrators and VARs should feel as if they [had] died and went to heaven." The five vendors, including Ancor Communications Inc., Minnetonka, Minn.; Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and Gadzoox Networks Inc., both of San Jose, Calif.; McData Corp., Broomfield, Colo.; and Vixel Corp., Bothell, Wash., formed the Open Standards Fabric Initiative (OSFI). OSFI plans to define and draft documents related to Fibre Channel switch interoperability for presentation to a working group under the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Once the presentation is made, OSFI is expected to dissolve, according to the participants. At the same time, the companies will develop the firmware each needs to ensure their switches are compatible with other vendors' switches. The vendors hope to have interoperable products available by early next year. Because the interoperability issue is one of firmware, the vendors also expect to be able to offer software which can be downloaded make legacy equipment compatible, as well. Switch interoperability is the key to SANs operating in heterogeneous environments, said Johnson. "You'll be able to tie two homogeneous SANs together, making them heterogeneous," he said. "This is the first big test to interoperability." Because IBM Corp., Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., and Sun Microsystems Inc. are big OEM customers of Fibre Channel switches from the five switch vendors, Johnson said he expects the server vendors to support OSFI. "I don't see any of the server vendors disagreeing," he said. "Do you do something like this without informing your biggest customers?" VARs should benefit from standardization, according to the switch vendors. "Up to this point, the Fibre Channel focus has been on complete solutions," said Brian Reed, Vixel's senior director of business development. "This will let the reseller community to pick their own products, and let them compete against homogeneous vendors." Peter Tarrant, Brocade's vice president of marketing and business development, said compatibility between switches from the five vendors, which he estimated control nearly 100 percent of the market, will let VARs pick the best switches for the application and be able to go into an existing system and change the switch brand. crn.com:80/dailies/digest/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=7629