BURLINGTON, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Aug. 22, 2005 -- AppIQ(TM), Inc., the Storage Management Software Company(TM), today announced the creation of the OpenIQ(TM) program, a new open community initiative sponsored by AppIQ aimed at promoting and accelerating the development of standards-based management applications worldwide. OpenIQ will provide a reference platform that implements the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) and Common Information Model (CIM) standards and will deliver a common set of specifications and programming interfaces, giving independent hardware vendors, independent software vendors, service providers, system integrators, and enterprise IT organizations a standards-built middleware platform. Whereas SMI-S provides a device integration standard and CIM provides a data model for IT infrastructure elements, OpenIQ will leverage these standards and the combined strength of the open community to provide the middleware needed to more quickly and cost-effectively build high-value storage management software.

"SMI-S is changing the storage industry by standardizing the way in which devices from multiple vendors can be managed, but, like any standard, it still requires development effort to implement the specification and deliver value," said John Webster, Founder and Senior Analyst, Data Mobility Group. "AppIQ has already done the work of leveraging SMI-S to implement an integrated SAN management and storage resource management platform that supports all of the leading storage vendors. The OpenIQ program basically creates an operating system for storage that anyone can leverage to get past all of the basic foundation work, and focus on building innovative storage management applications."

Members of the OpenIQ community, which will include leading storage system, switch, host bus adapter (HBA), and server vendors as well as independent software vendors, service providers, and enterprise customers, will work together to define a storage management platform specification that describes a common set of application programming interfaces (APIs) for developing management applications. These interfaces will be packaged in an Application Development Environment (ADE), complete with a software development kit (SDK), API documentation, and developer support and services. An Application Run-Time Environment (ARE) will also be provided that can be bundled with management applications developed using the SDK. AppIQ plans to contribute specifications for its CIMIQ-X storage middleware platform to the OpenIQ community as a starting point, and plans to work with the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) to ensure that the specification leverages and conforms to SMI-S.

AppIQ already has a strong track record of creating developer communities for standards-based storage management. The company's CIMIQ program, launched in 2002, has helped many storage vendors, including Brocade, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, McDATA, NetApp, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, Xiotech, and others, accelerate the delivery of SMI-S hardware providers. The CIMIQ developer platform acts as a translation layer that converts device vendor APIs and SNMP interfaces into native SMI-S.

"OpenIQ is the next natural step in the strategic technology direction for our company, and builds upon our history of standards compliance, our emergence as the OEM management platform of choice for more than half of the storage system market, and our customer momentum," said Ash Ashutosh, Chief Technology Officer, AppIQ. "We've been approached by a number of vendors and customers who want to build off of our platform because they don't want to re-invent the comprehensive, heterogeneous foundation capabilities we've already developed. Recognizing that AppIQ is not the world's only source of good storage management ideas, OpenIQ will enable outside developers to take advantage of our CIMIQ-X technology and standards leadership, and leverage the combined efforts of the community to deliver innovative management solutions that better serve customer needs."

AppIQ CIMIQ-X is the storage management middleware platform that powers AppIQ StorageAuthority(R) Suite, AppIQ's industry-leading SAN management and storage resource management solution family. CIMIQ-X abstracts management functions such as topology, navigation, dependency management, security, trending, real-time performance monitoring, workflow, and other management functions. CIMIQ-X integrates with SMI-S compliant devices, and with non-compliant devices through CIMIQ, to monitor, manage, and provision heterogeneous storage infrastructure, and provides the building blocks that support each AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite product module, including J2EE interfaces, a CIM and SMI-S-compliant data access model, a common agent, and a common configuration database. CIMIQ-X is used by AppIQ's own developers and AppIQ's OEM partners, including Engenio, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, SGI, and Sun Microsystems, to develop new product modules and integration connectors.

About AppIQ

AppIQ(TM), Inc. is a leading provider of open Storage Area Network (SAN) management and Storage Resource Management (SRM) solutions. Customers worldwide in almost every industry rely on AppIQ software to comply with storage service levels, reduce operational costs, and improve IT's ability to respond to business opportunity. AppIQ StorageAuthority(R) Suite and "Powered by AppIQ" solutions are "Enabling the storage utility"(TM) for today's data-intensive enterprise by seamlessly integrating storage resource visualization, provisioning, monitoring, reporting, and policy-based automation, and by correlating the availability of business-critical applications with SAN configuration, capacity, and performance. AppIQ products are sold across all continents through strategic OEM partners Engenio, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, SGI, and Sun Microsystems, and a global network of resellers. AppIQ is based in Burlington, MA, USA. For more information, visit www.appiq.com.

Copyright (C) 2005 AppIQ, Inc. AppIQ, SmartGuide, OpenIQ, and The Storage Management Software Company are trademarks and StorageAuthority is a registered trademark of AppIQ, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

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