Speichermanagementfirmen - gemeinsamer Standard

                     "Network storage, in particular [storage area network]
                     implementation, has essentially been a lock-in strategy for a lot of
                     these vendors," said Bob Zimmerman, an analyst with Giga
                     Information Group.

                     Back to earth

                     The vendors, emboldened by rapidly expanding sales, focused on
                     selling whole systems and then growing the accounts rather than
                     ensuring their products worked with those from competing vendors.

                     "There were lots of pieces, but they were Erector sets, Lincoln Logs
                     and Legos. If you notice, none of them have holes that make them
                     link together," Zimmerman said. The alliance is an indication
                     "storage is finally coming back to earth."

                     Under the agreement, which is being overseen by the Storage
                     Networking Industry Association, the vendors have created a
                     configuration using Brocade and one using McData in which
                     products from the four vendors will work together. Other
                     configurations are expected to follow.

                     EMC, IBM, Hitachi and Compaq have also agreed to work together
                     to service mutual customers when they have problems with
                     heterogeneous systems.

                     "Customers have asked for this," said Brenda Christensen, an SNIA
                     board member, in a news conference today. "The storage industry
                     has made a quantum leap toward interoperability."

                     More to come

                     The alliance, however, does not include several storage vendors like
                     Sun Microsystems (SUNW) and Hewlett-Packard (HWP) or
                     management software vendors like Veritas Software (VRTS).

                     SNIA officials say that will change.

                     "This was initially opened to a small manageable pioneering group,
                     but it will be open to all vendors," Christensen said.

                     James Opfer, a Gartner Dataquest analyst, said vendors outside the
                     alliance could face problems if they don't supply similar products
                     that work together.

                     But he said, "It's hard to see how this can be anything but beneficial
                     to customers."

                     Easy to use

                     What it does is provide an orderly way for customers to solve service
                     problems quickly rather than being passed back and forth between
                     various vendors.

                     "It's important that customers believe they have a definite path to
                     resolve problems," Opfer said.

                     Zimmerman said the ease-of-use perception is particularly important
                     in the current market because there is a lot of inertia among
                     customers who are hesitant about being locked into a particular
                     vendor.

                     "They've got to reignite the storage sales," he said.

                     And though more work will have to be done before the systems are
                     as open as customers would like, the alliance marks an
                     "incremental but necessary step," he said.

Gruß Dr. Broemme