IBM open source gang missing key players

LoveJunForever

IBM open source gang missing key players(重量级厂商缺席IBM存储开源联盟Aperi)
   ORLANDO, Fla. -- IBM unveiled plans at Storage Networking World (SNW)
to form an open source community to develop standards-based storage
management middleware, something users have demanded for a long time.
   The group is working under the project name, Aperi, derived from the
Latin word for "to open". The partners so far include Brocade 
Communication Systems Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Computer Associates
International Inc., Engenio Information Technologies, Fujitsu Ltd.,
McData Corp., Network Appliance Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Missing
from this list are EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), Hitachi Data
Systems Inc. (HDS) and Symantec Corp./Veritas Software Corp.
  "It's a good move -- it's the way the industry has to go, my only
concern is that there are still going to be different groups, some
participating in this one, some in groups elsewhere, and others not
participating at all," said Dick Spohrer, a consultant with Maxsult, an
IT integrator in Germany.
IBM's goal, through the community, is to create a single industry
standard that would define how to write all the low-level storage
management tasks like discovery and topology of devices, and reporting
and monitoring of the infrastructure. The community will build upon
existing open standards, including the Storage Networking Industry
Association's
Storage Management Initiative Specification
(SMI-S), and IBM plans to throw in all the code it has developed in this area.
  It believes open source middleware will take this standards development
forward by removing barriers to entry for software developers as they
don't have to spend time writing all the low-level stuff. Instead, they
can focus on developing useful storage applications, which should
ultimately be a good thing for users.
  Experts at the show seem to agree that it's a positive move by IBM, but
until it's backed by all the major hardware players, particularly EMC,
it's a nonstarter. "It's ironic that a positive community effort like
this ends up pointing to how polarized the industry is … It's probably
going to trigger an equally strong reaction on the opposite side," said
Urlich Franke, a storage architect in Germany who declined to give his
company name. "If EMC's not part of it, that's half the market closed
to you," he added.
  IBM hopes this won't be for long. "EMC has been invited to join, but
they haven't made a decision yet," said Laura Sanders, vice president
of TotalStorage products and solutions at IBM.
  This was apparently news to EMC. The company claimed it has not
received an invite from IBM. It's worth noting EMC made its own attempt
to lead an industry group around storage management middleware, called
WideSky, but it tanked through lack of support from other hardware
companies. EMC gave up on the effort in August 2003, in favor of
supporting SMI-S.
  Unlike WideSky, IBM's initiative is open source. In other words, the
code is freely available to anyone who wants to develop it. Aperi will
model IBM's Eclipse project, whose members have created the de facto
toolset for Java development. "Some of these people don't even like to
be in the same room together," Sanders noted, tangentially referencing
the stiff competition in the storage marketplace.
  Eclipse uses the Common Public License open source model, which means
that anyone can use the code. But if you make changes to it and
distribute these changes, you must contribute them back to the
community. "It safeguards customers developing proprietary
environments, but there's no free-riding for vendors," said Justin
Youngblood, business development manager in IBM's Tivoli Software group.
  Version 1.0 of the Eclipse Java development tool received 3.1 million
downloads in its first year, in 2001. Version 3.1 received one million
downloads in the first 40 days of its release, according to Youngblood.
IBM has also donated code to the Mozilla browser and a small database
used by Apache, called Derby.
  "There's no question the company has clout in open source," said Marc
Staimer, founder and consultant of Dragon Slayer Consulting. "This is
an industry-shaking event -- it hurts EMC and its hurts HP," he said.
  For its part, HP just spent close to $300 million acquiring AppIQ Inc.,
the market leader in heterogeneous, SMI-S-based storage management
software. Right before the acquisition, AppIQ launched a program called
OpenIQ, with exactly the same remit as IBM's Aperi initiative. OpenIQ,
however, is not an open source group. Participating vendors must license AppIQ's software. HP does not draw attention to this fact.
  "We are glad IBM is following HP's lead in announcing an open community
initiative to establish a standard platform for advanced, heterogeneous
storage management applications," said Frank Harbist, vice president
and general manager of
information lifecycle management
and storage software at HP, in an e-mail to SearchStorage.com.
  The message continued: "While we welcome IBM's efforts to make HP's
proposed model stronger, we don't understand why IBM has skipped over
the necessary first step of defining a specification, and instead has
moved directly to suggesting an implementation and a business model.
And we don't believe another project is needed to drive standards,
since this appears to be based on IBM's own technology under the guise
of open source. We view this largely as a public relations stunt that
will not deliver value to customers."
  During a press conference announcing Aperi at SNW, IBM said that it was
still working out the details on the levels of participation from its
partners, regarding code sharing, engineering expertise and financial
backing. While these details have yet to be ironed out, IBM at least
has some support, which is more than can be said for HP's OpenIQ
program.
  Users of Sun's StorEdge Enterprise Storage Management suite, which
integrates AppIQ's StorageAuthority software, should take note that Sun
has joined IBM's initiative but has not backed OpenIQ. This doesn't
bode well for the future of its Enterprise Storage Management product
based on the AppIQ's technology.
  The Aperi consortium will announce details about the organization,
including the multi-vendor board of directors soon, IBM officials said.
  In more standards new at SNW, IBM and EMC are working together on
pushing a standard for object-based storage. For more on this story,
click here
.
FROM searchstorage



本文来自ChinaUnix博客，如果查看原文请点：http://blog.chinaunix.net/u/8368/showart_53761.html