IBM And HP Swap Storage APIs

In yet another indication that the storage industry is heating up, IBM and HP have entered into a cross-licensing agreement for their storage APIs and Command Line Interfaces so that both companies can provide storage management products (another hot area) that cover both vendors’ storage hardware offerings.  This will allow IBM software to manage HP StorageWorks products.  HP OpenView Storage Area Manager will be able to manage IBM’s TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server. 

Enhanced and extended storage management is seen by many as an important way toward more automated (and hence less complex) overall systems management offerings that encompass the reality of multiple vendors and heterogeneous systems.

Both vendors support industry work toward standards based on CIM (Common Information Model) and Bluefin, but want to serve their customers’ needs for interoperability while standards evolve.  These API exchanges are viewed as an interim step to standards-based interoperability, based on work by the Storage Networking Industry Association.  They – and other vendors – are expected to demonstrative Bluefin capability at an industry event this fall.

IBM has not ruled out the possibility that it might also swap API’s with storage competitor EMC as well.

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