EMC Puts WideSky on Ice

EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) has stopped promoting its WideSky middleware program in favor of adopting industry standards to manage multivendor SANs, the company's top software executive said this week.

EMC introduced WideSky in October 2001 as software that "masks the underlying complexity of multiple vendors' products." The move prompted waves of concern [ed. note: or nausea] among competitors and some customers that EMC was scheming to grab more control of the storage using a proprietary software stack (see Users Frosty on EMC WideSky, Standards Clique Freezes Out EMC, and The Common Code).

But now, WideSky -- at least as a marketing program -- appears to be dead.

Mark Lewis, EVP of open software operations, said in an interview with Byte and Switch at the company's analyst day meeting in New York that the company has aligned its strategy for supporting third-party storage systems and devices with Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)'s Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S).

"We're not discussing that [WideSky] because we said we'd open up, and use standards and API swaps," Lewis said. "SMI is our external strategy." At this point, he said, WideSky is simply "internal middleware" that EMC's own developers are using.If that's indeed the case, EMC should update its Website. The company still maintains a section dedicated to WideSky, which touts it as a technology that gives developers a "write-once, manage many" capability across multiple storage software, systems, and connectivity devices.

Is it possible that -- after months of foot-dragging on the issue and dismissing standards as a half-baked answer to the problem of multivendor SAN management -- EMC is finally throwing its full weight behind supporting standards? Its executives are certainly saying the right things. In his presentation to investors and analysts, Lewis said, "SMI is a great thing not only for the industry, but for EMC."

And on the hardware front, EMC has committed to providing SMI-S support across its entire family of storage systems products by the end of the year, said Dave Donatelli, EVP of storage platforms operations, also at the analyst meeting this week. However, he added, that's assuming that SNIA ratifies the spec in the fourth quarter as expected (see EMC Salivates Over Software).

Furthermore, Lewis said EMC is also driving for the standardization of APIs for intelligent SAN switches. The company is working with both Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD) and Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) to develop a SNIA standard for accessing network devices that provide advanced storage services, he said (see EMC, Cisco Do the Deed, Brocade Loads Code, Signs EMC, and V-Switch Alliances Take Shape).

All told, the cry from Hopkinton these days seems to be: YAYYYYYYYY, standards! That's the polar opposite of EMC's previous position on the issue. Last year, former EMC CTO Jim Rothnie, speaking during a roundtable panel, said: "If we wait for standards, they'll be ready... in 20 years' time." (See Standards Battle Still a Hot Potato).We can only assume now that Rothnie's calculation was in dog years.

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch