Even with a trusted partner, he says, users should not expect to rapidly reach the highest level of SAN maturity overnight. What they can expect is someone to help develop strategies and be there to support them when they reach crisis points or major milestones. Shinn highly recommends GlassHouse Technologies Inc. and Darwin Partners Inc. as consultants with strong SAN experience and knowledge.

SMI-S: Ahead of the user curve?

Clark is a former Storage Networking Industry Association board member who has held chair positions for SNIA Customer Initiatives and the SNIA Interoperability Committee. He says users have been waiting for SMI-S to reach a point of maturity that makes them feel it is worth their while to cut over. He also says that point has now been reached. The nascent standard has been the subject of rampant speculation and hopeful predictions even as it slowly winds its way through the standards process and into the budgets of storage networking users.

Blackman counts himself as a SMI-S supporter, saying, "I've been an advocate of the SMI-S standard, and part of that is because I think things should be interoperable. I believe I should be able to slice and dice disks and present data from different storage arrays."

Asked to describe the standard's current status insofar as actual implementations are concerned, Clark says, "In this one rare instance in our industry history, I think the industry is ahead of the users. SMI-S capabilities are being supported in hardware today. Platform developers have SMI-S-capable management frameworks, but customer adoption is still lagging."