SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) today released its second round of conformance test definitions and associated test suites supporting its SANmark(TM) Qualified Program. This industry landmark, open standards compliance program, proactively resolves key protocol and multi-vendor integration challenges, promoting mainstream compatibility and consistency across heterogeneous Fibre Channel-based Storage Area Networks (SANs). SANmark's value to the industry is based upon the resolution of compatibility issues for existing products as well as reducing time to market for new products by significantly reducing the time required to interpret, implement and validate standards. Developers now have access to "open source code" for all tests, providing the ability to complete their testing in-house and solve conformance challenges before products are brought to market. Today's announcement enhances the SANmark Program with three new Standards Conformance Documents (SCD), addressing Fabric Attach Device Conformance, Inter-Switch Link (E_Port) Conformance and Fabric Loop (FL_Port) Conformance. In the last nine months, the SANmark Program established and documented a formal process to develop SCDs and associated test suites, specifically addressing roles and responsibilities, critical assumptions in an open industry review and approval process. The first SANmark conformance suite, Arbitrated Loop Conformance, was introduced to the industry in October 2000. "The FCIA established the SANmark Qualified Program to provide the industry with an objective indication of how Fibre Channel products perform against reasonable standards through the use of published conformance test suites," said David Deming, FCIA Interoperability Committee Leader. "The ultimate objective is to protect our mutual customers' and end-users' investments in Fibre Channel technology, while accelerating market adoption." As a result of these accomplishments, the FCIA SANmark Program has completed technical and organizational development of a Gold Standard applicable across the entire storage networking industry. The Gold Standard provides direct measurement of standards compliance for Fibre Channel and is broadly applicable to other high speed networking technologies. The core value of the SANmark Gold Standard is the close integration across: -- T11 Fibre Channel Standards -- Industry devices made available in sponsored Small Group Test Periods -- Measurable "Pass-Fail" Conformance Test Definitions & Test Suites "With major contributions from the standards working groups, the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab and a wide array of corporate participants, the FCIA has created a highly collaborative standards conformance initiative," says Chris Lyon, FCIA Executive Director. "SANmark actively 'puts into practice the long sought after `heterogeneous market value system,' which embodies increased return on investment, improved options to consistently solve business problems using open industry standards based building blocks, improved time to market, as well as improved service & support across a variety of product and service providers." "The FCIA SANmark Program provides a forum for industry-wide consensus among heterogeneous storage networking providers, encouraging the convergence of mainstream products," says Michael Hoard, FCIA board member and SANmark Program Leader. "Customers can now demand the `SANmark Gold Standard Seal of Conformance' when evaluating and choosing their SAN solution." "Over the last several years, the FCIA has worked very closely with the T11 Fibre Channel standards development groups," said Bill Martin, FCIA SANmark Technical Leader and T11 Standards Leader. "Through these joint efforts, the FCIA and T11 have developed several critical standards, including Fibre Channel Methodologies for Interconnects (FC-MI), and Fibre Channel Switch Fabric - 2 (FC-SW-2), which enhance FC-SW by providing an open standard for path selection and distributed services in Fibre Channel switches." Martin added, "SANmark is one of several industry leading initiatives sponsored by the FCIA that consistently benefit the entire storage networking industry." The SANmark Program acts as the proactive catalyst to directly seek out and resolve interoperability and compatibility issues. At this time, additional conformance test definitions and test suites are in development, addressing fabric services and other critical storage networking characteristics. More information on the SANmark trademark administration program, interoperability plugfest events, education, training and overall industry promotion are available upon request. Please contact the FCIA in order to satisfy all of your business critical SANmark needs. The SANmark Qualified Program is sponsored, operated, and promoted as an open industry, conformance test suite development program, within the non-profit Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA). This program addresses product interoperability and device level compatibility for companies participating in the program. The program is open to members and non-members of the FCIA organization, and is intended to benefit the entire storage networking industry at large. To get involved in the program or ask questions, please send an email to info@fibrechannel.org.