IBM, Sun and Partners to Form Open Source Community

Brocade Communication Systems, Cisco Systems, Inc., Computer Associates International, Inc., Engenio Information Technologies, Fujitsu Limited, IBM Corporation, McDATA Corporation, Network Appliance, Inc. and Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced their intent to form a new open source community (www.ibm.com/storage/community), initially working under the project name Aperi, to give customers more choices for deploying open-standards-based storage infrastructure software.

Aperi - derived from the Latin word for "to open" -- will take an open approach to build a common platform for managing all brands of storage systems, with community members contributing code and taking advantage of a common platform for building storage software applications.

Previous storage industry group initiatives have focused on establishing standards but not collaborating to develop an open source-based platform to manage storage devices.

Members of the community, which will be managed by an independent, non-profit, multi-vendor organization, will work together to evolve the platform, which will be available free-of-charge.

At first, IBM, Sun and the other partners plan to donate part of their storage infrastructure management technology to the open source community. Other members will have the option to also donate a portion of their intellectual property, so that collectively the group can advance the platform and encourage developers to write storage management software based on the platform.

"As a leader in driving Open Source communities, Sun is very interested the development of open source storage and data management solutions and intends to participate in a community that is dedicated to this type of development," said Randy Kerns, VP Strategy and Planning, Data Management Group, Sun Microsystems.

Providing more flexibility for storage management provides a range of benefits to customers, who face storage complexity and staff shortages and lack a standard way to manage information through its lifecycle.

Similarly, the community will help customers by enabling storage vendors to efficiently develop a management platform within an open source-based consortium framework, while focusing on developing new capabilities that enhance their own storage products.

"Cisco is committed to supporting and furthering industry efforts that create more flexibility and choice, reduce costs, simplify management, and advance industry standards," said Tom Edsall, Vice President and General Manager, Data Center Switching Business Unit, Cisco Systems, Inc.

The community will build upon existing open storage standards, including the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S), which develops and standardizes interoperable storage management technologies for storage hardware interfaces.

"Brocade has a history of leadership in developing industry standards and a commitment to interoperability in SAN infrastructure," said Dan Crain, Chief Technology Officer, Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.