22 May 2002 A consortium of a dozen storage companies has created a new standard for data-storage called “Bluefin”, which it hopes will make storage management easier.
Bluefin is intended to enable customers to better manage their storage servers, tape drives and switches, by establishing a common interface for identifying and controlling storage area networks (SANs). Companies that develop storage management software will then be able to access and manage any hardware that uses that interface.
During the past year, the data-storage industry has suffered a slump because of the IT recession and the price war between IBM, EMC and Hitachi. To boost their profits, the companies have started developing software to manage their own hardware — Bluefin will enable future software to manage other vendors’ hardware.
The consortium, which includes IBM, EMC, Hitachi, HP, Veritas, Brocade and BMC Software, will present Bluefin today to the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), a not-for-profit group made up of more than 300 companies and organisations.
