The Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) is a standard for managing storage across heterogeneous vendor systems. Adoption and implementation of SMI-S will eventually lead to better storage management software, but this process may take several years to bear fruit.
This research note presents the must-have information on this critical storage topic, including:
- A technical definition of what SMI-S is and how it will benefit enterprises.
- A review of SMI-S development, the competitive landscape in which it exists, and vendor response.
- An assessment of SMI-S's prospects as a future storage industry standard.
SMI-S provides the means for storage management to become more ubiquitous across heterogeneous storage devices. As major storage vendors react to each other's advances, look for SMI-S standards to continue to progress.