Vendors Choose Sides in API Battles

So in the last few months, HP has signed API deals with EMC, IBM and Hitachi--essentially helping them corner 90 percent of the installed storage market, said Mark E. Sorenson, vice president of HP's storage software division. And with these deals, HP plans to ship by November this year a new version of its OpenView Storage Manager product--one that allows for management of heterogeneous systems.

Any plans to bring Sun Microsystems into the API fold? Not really, said Sorenson. By signing with Hitachi, they have all the access they need since Sun resells Hitachi's high-end disk arrays. And he sees no compelling need to get access to Sun's mid-tier subsystems. "We have not seen any customer demand for those arrays," he said. "We don't see Sun as a major player in the storage arena."

But that does not mean Mark Canepa, Sun's executive vice president of storage products, has little to say about the whole API game. In late August, Sun announced its Sun StorEdge Enterprise Storage Manager (ESM) for Storage Area Networks was compliant with CIM (Common Information Model), industry-standard interfaces recently approved by SNIA, and Bluefin, another common interface designed to enhance management of SANs.

What all of these companies are doing is pretty simple: Most agree that the best solution to all this storage hardware interoperability is through standards-based interfaces like CIM and Bluefin. But, even after ratification, it will take some years before these interfaces include the rich management functions that customers are demanding. So, in the meantime, individual vendors like HP and EMC have been in a race to sign up as many API partnerships with competing vendors to quickly put out an open-standard management product that can capture market space.

EMC signed up first with Compaq Computer and then with HP after the two companies merged. Hitachi has signed up with HP and IBM. And HP has inked deals with Hitachi, IBM and EMC. Throughout this whole game, EMC has had a tougher job making friends with its competitors because many in the industry--including Sorenson-- believe the Hopkinton, Mass.-based company is out to corner and control the storage software market with its WideSky middleware. During yesterday's conference call, Sorenson was even willing to call WideSky dead.

"Frankly, we don't believe WideSky has any traction anymore," he said.

Canepa said IBM has flat out refused to sign an agreement with EMC. And during yesterday's conference call, Christine Wallace, senior vice president of global strategies and planning at Hitachi Data Systems, said because of the lawsuit between Hitachi and EMC "the last thing we are about to do is exchange APIs with them."

The last time Sun was involved in negotiations with EMC for an API agreement was about 18 months ago. Needless to say, it did not go well. Canepa said it ended up being an interesting market exercise because all of these deals are being hammered out individually. Sun does not know what EMC negotiated with HP, any more than EMC knows what HP has negotiated with Hitachi.

What Sun discovered was EMC was perfectly willing to let competitors look at the APIs for their flagship Symmetrix, but they demanded high license fees to actually use the APIs for specific functions such as monitoring the capacity of LUNs (logical unit numbers) or dynamic provisioning. "You can [use the APIs if you are willing to pay a bunch of money," said Canepa, "and that is the problem."

Sorenson would not divulge any specifics of their deal with EMC, other than to say, "The EMC deal was specifically defined. They never gave anything they did not get in return. It was quid pro quo. The IBM and Hitachi deals were more broadly defined and more in line with the spirit of helping customers with heterogeneous environments."

Stay tuned for which company will win.