Woodside, CA - October 1, 2001 -- The DAFS Collaborative today announced several significant developments: completion of Version 1.0 of the DAFS protocol specification; submission of the DAFS specification to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards body; and creation of the DAFS Implementers' Forum within the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), to act as the successor organization to the DAFS Collaborative.

The DAFS protocol is a high-performance file access technology that will greatly improve the performance, scalability and reliability of Internet and enterprise applications in clustered data center environments. The DAFS Collaborative was formed by Network Appliance and Intel, with the specific goal of creating the DAFS protocol specification, encouraging broad industry participation, and submitting the specification to a standards body. More than 85 leading systems, storage and networking vendors have signed up as contributors to the initiative.

"DAFS was designed to deliver a host of improvements in performance, flexibility and reliability for data center applications," said Steve Kleiman, chief technology officer of Network Appliance, and one of the original inventors of DAFS. "With V1.0 of the Spec complete, we now look forward to demonstrating the bottom line benefits of DAFS, as applications like databases, email, and other I/O intensive systems begin taking advantage of it over the next year."

"Last summer, the DAFS Collaborative set out to create the DAFS protocol specification within a year. I'm delighted to say that we have successfully completed that mission," said David Dale, co-chair of the DAFS Collaborative. "Now it's time to transition the initiative from Spec development to the marketing and delivery of interoperable DAFS solutions to the marketplace. The Storage Networking Industry Association is the obvious choice to host this activity."

"The Board of Directors of the Storage Networking Industry Association unanimously approved the formation of the DAFS Implementers' Forum within SNIA," said Larry Krantz, chairman of the SNIA Board of Directors. "This new Forum is an excellent example of the SNIA's mission to promote storage networking throughout the industry. The DAFS Implementers' Forum fits very well with the goals and focus of the SNIA and the SNIA Forums. We welcome DAFS to the Storage Networking Industry Association."