SCIENCE

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), the premier storage networking trade organization, announced today the charter members of the newly created Supported Solutions Forum (SSF). The 33 charter member companies represent a broad spectrum of the storage networking industry, spanning virtually all product and application segments. The following companies are charter members of the SNIA Supported Solutions Forum: Adaptec, Inc., ADIC, AT&T, Brocade Communications, Inc., Cereva Networks Inc., Chaparral Network Storage Inc., Compaq Computer Corporation, Crossroads Systems, Inc., DataCore Software, Dell, EMC Corporation, Emulex Corporation, Entrada Networks, Gadzoox Networks, Hewlett-Packard Company, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM Corporation, INRANGE Technologies Corporation, JNI Corporation, Legato Systems, Inc., LSI Logic Storage Systems, Inc., McDATA Corporation, MTI Technology, Pirus Networks, QLogic Corporation, Quantum |ATL, StorageTek, Spectra Logic Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Troika Networks, VERITAS Software, Vixel Corporation, and XIOtech Corporation. "We are very pleased with the broad level of industry participation and encouraged by these leading storage networking companies commitment to the Supported Solutions Forum," said Marc Oswald, Chairperson of the Supported Solutions Forum. "Today's storage networking customers require fully supported heterogeneous solutions that enable them to achieve the full potential of open, networked storage environments. This Forum provides a platform for vendors to work together in meeting these requirements." The Supported Solutions Forum is uniquely positioned to accelerate customer implementation of storage networking solutions by addressing the two most urgent customer requirements, cooperative support and tested interoperable configurations. The breadth of the charter membership shows that players in the same market space can successfully cooperate to achieve these goals for the benefit of network storage customers by creating and supporting additional deployment scenarios for storage networking solutions. The SNIA launched the Supported Solutions Forum June 4, 2001. This highly innovative Forum was created as the result of strong customer demand for open, heterogeneous and supported storage networking solutions. The SNIA Supported Solutions Forum breaks new ground in that, for the first time, competing vendors have come together to deliver jointly qualified, pre-tested, interoperable configurations that will be cooperatively supported. "It was important to us that the Supported Solutions Forum have a broad membership so that the Forum can continue to move forward with the agenda set forth in early June," said Oswald. "For example, SSF's Cooperative Support Subgroup is in the process of defining various support levels for heterogeneous solutions, ranging from a common Code of Conduct for customer service calls to customizable cooperative support agreements. The Interoperable Configurations Subgroup (ICS) also is looking at the test and qualification criteria for registering supported solutions, as well as assessing customer requirements for networked storage environments. There is a lot to do, and the participation of each of these member companies is vital to our success." The SNIA continues to encourage additional companies to join this open, industry initiative. To learn more about the SNIA and our other open industry initiatives like the Supported Solutions Forum, please visit the SNIA website at www.snia.org, or contact the SNIA directly at info@snia.org.