Cisco Makes SAN Software Friends

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) has announced that it is collaborating with all the major storage management software vendors, which are planning to release products supporting its MDS 9000 Fibre Channel switches in 60 to 90 days (see Cisco Outlines Andiamo APIs).

To speed up the adoption of its new Fibre Channel products, Cisco released a software developers kit (SDK) to the storage management community in October 2002. The kit included a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) and a simulator of the switch's behavior for the software developers to test their products on. The official launch of the API-exchange program comes after Cisco executives referred to it at last month's RBC Capital Markets storage networking conference in New York (see Cisco Knocks 'Nerd Knobs').

"The aim was to reduce the overhead for development," says Bill Erdman, director of storage technology alliances at Cisco. "We didn't want our partners to have to build a lab in order to support this product."

The APIs, which Cisco has given away for free, enable basic storage resource management (SRM) functions. These include discovering MDS 9000 switches on a network; performing configuration management, including implementing Fibre Channel zones and virtual SANs (VSANs); and providing topology-aware diagnostics and alert-management via SNMP traps and alerts.

"Advanced functions, such as virtualization, where you take a physical map and show logical partitions, is a second order of complexity and will require additional engineering on our partners' behalf," says Erdman.Vendors currently participating in the program include: BMC Software Inc. (NYSE: BMC), Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) (NYSE: CA), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), IBM Tivoli, InterSAN Inc., Tek-Tools Inc., and Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS). All of these vendors say their SAN management packages will be capable of discovering and monitoring Cisco's Fibre Channel switches within the next three months.

Meanwhile, Cisco expects its switches to be compliant with the Common Information Model (CIM)-based specification being promoted by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) in the second half of 2003 (see The Common Code).

While not jaw-droppingly exciting, this announcement demonstrates Cisco's ability to execute, so far, on its strategy in this market. Now begins the hard part: It must sell the Andiamo Systems Inc. switches against tried and tested products from at least three formidable opponents -- Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD), McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA), and Inrange Technologies Corp.