When broadly adopted, the SNIA Storage Management Initiative Specification will solve this problem by replacing today’s multiple disparate managed object models, protocols, and transports with common models for each object class and a common protocol for management interactions.  Management application developers will be able to support devices from multiple vendors quickly and reliably because they “look alike”.   Development and testing costs will drop; time to market will be shorter; customer satisfaction will increase, and ultimately, profitability will rise.
	The slide illustrates the management application environment enabled by the SMIS using CIM/WBEM technology. As the figure suggests, the SMIS consists of a single object-oriented model for each type of component in a storage network. These models define common attributes and behavior for standard features. Management actions are communicated using a single management protocol and transport that can be carried on any of several interconnects. Included are a uniform set of discovery, security, and durable naming services. To enable multiple management applications to coexist in a network, SMIS includes a lock manager that can be used to prevent applications’ actions from interfering with each other.
	The models and protocols comprising SMIS are platform-independent, enabling applications to be developed for any platform, and enabling applications running on different types of platforms to interoperate.   The SNIA is implementing SMIS interoperability conformance tests to further increase the compatibility experienced by management application developers when integrating devices of a give type.
	CIM/WBEM technology uses a powerful human AND machine readable language called the managed object format (MOF) to precisely specify object models. Compilers can be developed to read MOF files and automatically generate data type definitions, interface stubs, and GUI constructs to be inserted into management applications.
	SMIS object models are extensible, enabling easy addition of new devices and functionality to the model, and allowing vendor-unique extensions for added-value functionality.