SNIA’s Technical Council is one of the crown jewels of the organization. Made up of a group of acknowledged storage experts, the Technical Council oversees and manages SNIA Technical Work Groups, reviews architectures submitted by work groups, and is SNIA’s technical liaison to standards organizations. One of the Council’s superpowers is its ISO JTC-1 designation as an ARO and a PAS submitter. What does that actually mean? It’s a very big deal! SNIA is only one of 13 organizations worldwide that have the PAS submission capability, putting it in exclusive company. The list includes: “Traditionally, ISO standards can only reference one another. By approving SNIA as an Approved Reference Organization (ARO), JTC1 is acknowledging SNIA’s rigorous development process and technical credibility. This allows the documents that SNIA develops to be used to underpin other ISO standards,” said Arnold Jones, Technical Council Managing Director, SNIA. “In addition, SNIA has satisfied the extensive criteria to become a Publicly Available Standard (PAS) submitter.” ISO is an independent, international organization with a membership of 165 national standards bodies. It is the international standards organization. When a SNIA standard becomes ISO-approved, virtually every country in the world has access to it along with confidence it will work well with solutions in the marketplace. ISO/IEC JTC 1 is a joint technical committee of ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Its purpose is to develop, maintain and promote standards in the fields of information technology and Information and Communications Technology. Specifications developed by a PAS Submitter can use a streamlined approval process within ISO, assuring that recent, advanced technology moves from industry consensus to international standard as quickly and efficiently as possible. SNIA was reaffirmed as a PAS submitter by ISO in 2018 for another five-year term, with its status in effect until September 2023. SMI-S Storage Management Specification The Storage Management Initiative-Specification (SMI-S) provides a real-world example of how a PAS submission works within SNIA. SMI-S was first approved as an ISO standard in 2002. Today, it has been implemented in over 1,350 storage products that provides access to common storage management functions and features. During its lifetime, the SMI-S standard has been approved by ISO many times. The current international standard for SMI-S was based on SMI-S v1.5, which was completed in 2011, submitted for ISO approval in 2012, and formally adopted in 2014 as the latest revision of ISO/IEC 24775. SMI-S 1.8 was recently sent to ISO as an update to ISO/IEC 24775. SNIA believes SMI-S 1.8 rev 5 is the very best version of the specification and should be adopted worldwide. As a PAS submission, it will become an international standard much more quickly. Published by SNIA as a standard in March, 2020, it was submitted to ISO in May and began a 90-day ballot in August. If all goes as expected, SMI-S v1.8 will be approved as ISO/IEC 24775:2020 by the end of the year – less than a year after its publication as a SNIA architecture. Subscribe to the SNIA Matters Newsletter here to stay up-to-date on all SNIA announcements and be one of the first to learn the status of the SMI-S 1.8 rev 5 storage specification. Want to learn more about ISO and PAS? You might find the following links useful: