San Francisco, June 5, 2006 – The SCSI Trade Association (STA), a member-run industry association established to support and promote SCSI technology, announced today that the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) is celebrating twenty five years of excellence in providing the leading storage I/O technology to enterprise systems worldwide. At its zenith, SCSI held more than 80% of the market in storage I/O. The successor to SCSI, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), is rapidly replacing legacy SCSI as the leadership storage technology.

At its beginning in 1981, the future SCSI was a cooperative venture between NCR (NCR’s effort was spearheaded by John Lohmeyer, now with LSI Logic, and the head of the T10 Technical Committee) and Shugart Associates. The two companies joined forces to propose SASI (an early I/O technology that Shugart was developing), as a draft document for a prospective ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standard at the ANSI X3T9.3 Committee meeting in October, 1981. With acceptance by ANSI and the addition of other storage companies to develop the new technology, SASI was renamed SCSI and became the legendary storage I/O.

Harry Mason, Director, Industry Marketing, LSI Logic and President of STA stated, “SCSI has been a fundamental component of multi-user storage architecture since its inception. While its legacy has had a profound impact on the server market and the creation of other logical SCSI compatible standards, its most exciting era lies ahead. The market transformation to Serial Attached SCSI is now in full swing and virtually guarantees that SCSI will remain at the fore-front of enterprise storage for the foreseeable future.

John Lohmeyer, Principal Engineer, LSI Logic, and Chair of the T10 Technical Committee commented, “Between 1982 and 1984, numerous additional enhancements and functionality were added to SCSI and in 1986, the first SCSI standard was published by ANSI. Looking back, I marvel at how quickly we were able to complete the first SCSI specification. Our effort provided the standard SCSI storage I/O that stimulated the storage industry to grow very rapidly.”

Carrying on the SCSI legacy, SAS technology development is based on the roadmap going out to 2012 with 12 Gb/s performance. T10 technical committee meetings are held six times per year to advance the technology. Currently, many SAS-based products, including complete storage systems, are available on the market.

About STA
The SCSI Trade Association was established in 1995 to provide a focal point for members to communicate the benefits of SCSI to the industry. STA promotes the understanding and use of SCSI technology and influences the evolution of SCSI standards to meet future industry needs. The Association has a nine-member Board of Directors that oversees the Marketing Communications and Technology Committees and all STA activities. To subscribe to Serial Storage Wire, STA’s free Serial Attached SCSI newsletter, please visit: www.serialstoragewire.com. For more information, please visit the STA web site at http://www.scsita.org, send an email to info@scsita.org or call the STA office at 415-561-6273.

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