CHICAGO -- Brocade Chairman and CEO Greg Reyes said his company's announcement Wednesday that it would share its Fabric Access API 2.0 with major companies such as Hitachi, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard will help to accelerate SAN deployment.
The API announcement was made during the SearchStorage Storage Management 2002 conference and follows EMC's announcement Tuesday that it would integrate Brocade's API into its WideSky storage management middleware.
In addition, the company announced five new partners in its Fabric Access Program. As Fabric Access partners, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Hewlett-Packard, NetIQ, and XIOtech can use the information delivered by the Fabric OS to enhance their management applications.
These companies join the 36 other companies using the Fabric Access API.
"This is an effort to try to open up our infrastructures by sharing APIs," said Reyes. "This is an exciting development in the industry."
Brocade's announcement is part of a growing trend in sharing APIs in the name of storage management. Third-party vendors using Brocade's API can deliver advanced fabric management features resident in the Brocade intelligent fabric to customers through their applications. These features are designed to automate configuration and operation of the SAN fabric, optimize performance, and increase application availability.
Industry experts contend that the API programs are essential for storage management development.
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"Current and future storage management frameworks will require access to critical infrastructure-based information in order to become more intelligent and more responsive to the needs of IT administrators tasked with doing more with less,'' said John Webster, senior analyst at Illuminata, a Nashua, N.H.-based analyst firm. "Up to now, the lack of open APIs from standards consortia has hindered this needed development effort. However, Brocade's Fabric Access Partner program is an example of a recognized approach that facilitates storage management interoperability today.''
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