STA’s Charter
The SCSI Trade Association (STA) was established in 1995 as a member-run organization to provide a focal point for members to communicate the benefits of the small computer system interface (SCSI) to the storage industry. For more than twelve years, STA promoted the understanding and use of SCSI technology and influenced the evolution of SCSI standards. It now promotes the new generation SCSI technology, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). SAS components entered the market in the fall of 2004 and usage escalated rapidly in the fourth quarter of 2006. Indications across the storage industry are that SAS implementations will become the predominant enterprise disk drive interconnect within the next year. A nine-member Board of Directors oversees the Marketing Communications Committee, the SAS Technology Liaison and directs all STA activities.
25+ Years of SCSI History
In 2001, SCSI celebrated its first 20 years as the leading industry storage I/O technology. Seven generations of Parallel SCSI were developed during that period. Ultra320 SCSI was the last generation, entering the market in late 2001. In 2006, the first 25 years of SCSI was celebrated, with additional excitement surrounding the new SCSI generation, SAS.
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
The T10 committee accepted STA’s SAS proposal as a development project in May, 2002. STA anticipated that SAS products would enter the market in 2004, which they did, on schedule, in the second half of 2004. Now, in 2007, SAS product introduction and inplementation is accelerating with the expectation that by mid-2008, SAS will be a storage technology leader worldwide. OEM adoption is growing rapidly and quantities of SAS products have moved into the indirect channels. SAS products are ready for market when predicted, due in part to seven successful plugfests from 2004 through Aug., 2007. Early plugfests were planned to coincide with the SAS development schedule, greatly enhancing the interoperability with Serial ATA (SATA) and compatibility with earlier SCSI generations.
STA Members
STA member companies represent every segment of computing and storage, including systems, hard disk drives, peripherals, semiconductors, cables and connectors. Through constant monitoring of industry research and feedback from customers, STA members understand what the storage industry will need two, three or more years in the future. STA maintains a liaison function with the T10 Committee (see below), to ensure that future SAS technology standards will meet the industry’s requirements. A roster of member companies is available on the STA web site. For membership inquiries, please contact the STA office.
T10 Standards Committee
The T10 Committee is under the auspices of INCITS (InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards), which is under ANSI (American National Standards Institute). T10 standards approved by ANSI are forwarded on to ISO to become international standards. The T10 Committee has an established track record of moving first SCSI, then SAS technology forward, all the while maintaining backward compatibility with existing implementations. T10 is currently finalizing the SAS 2.0 standard which will provide the technical and functional parameters for 6Gb/s SAS. For more information on T10, please go to http://www.t10.org.
For more Information on STA
For more information about STA and SAS, please visit the web site at http://www.scsita.org, send an email to info@scsita.org, call the STA office at (415) 561-6273 or send a fax to (415) 561-6120. STA is headquartered at 572B Ruger Street, San Francisco, CA, 94129.