SNIA Standards: Trusted Solutions, Advancing an Industry

Welcome to the SNIA Standards Page, an information portal for all of the technical standards developed by the SNIA.

The SNIA has a history of developing technologies that have emerged as standards. In the early days of the association, some of these technologies were contributed by the SNIA to other standards organizations, such as INCITS T11, the standards group for Fibre Channel, and T10, the standards group for SCSI. More recently, SNIA has begun offering standards on its own, such as the SMI-S standard for storage management and the IMA standard for iSCSI management.

SNIA Technical Position

SNIA standards are primarily related to data, storage, and information management and address such challenges as interoperability, usability, and complexity. They start out in SNIA-sponsored Technical Working Groups (member collaboration efforts centering on best practices) or as contributions from independent vendor collaborations, and are subject to a rigorous processes involving checks and technology reviews by SNIA’s Members, Technical Council, and Board of Directors, conducted under provisions that respect and protect intellectual property and address licensing of essential claims.

A SNIA standard that has completed these processes is labeled a SNIA Technical Position, which signifies that the SNIA endorses and recommends the ideas, methodologies, and technologies described.

The SNIA may take SNIA Technical Positions to ANSI, ISO, and other national and international standards bodies for additional endorsement.

Benefits of SNIA Standards

SNIA standards benefit vendors and end users as well as our members and non-members. Vendors gain the benefits of quicker time to market, reduced costs, and greater customer acceptance than if each company were to attempt to create its own unique process for every technical interaction. End users that employ products that comply with SNIA standards enjoy greater interoperability, reduced training, and ultimately lower total cost of ownership.

A Partnership with INCITS

SNIA participates in the INCITS Fast Track program in order to gain adoption of SNIA Technical Positions as ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standards.  Following ANSI adoption, SNIA works with INCITS to submit the standard to international standards organizations such as ISO/ITC JTC1 for adoption as an international standard. As part of ANSI and ISO adoption, SNIA standards are subject to additional scrutiny through public reviews.

The SNIA Standards Committee manages these submissions and, with the SNIA Technical Council, is the overall coordination point for SNIA’s standards development efforts.

For More Information

• Standards Portfolio
• The SNIA IP Policy binds members toward certain behaviors around intellectual property.

For additional information, contact the SNIA Technical Council Managing Director at tcmd@snia.org.

Key Programs

• Data Management Forum
• Green Storage Initiative
• Storage Management Initiative (SMI)
• XAM Initiative