Storage association pumps up activities
SINGAPORE--The South Asia chapter of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) wants to be the guiding body for enterprise storage purchases and implementation in the region, and aims to do so by engaging more end-users in its activities.
The association's activities include providing organizations with case study information, educational programs for systems integrators and end-users, certification courses and best-practice sessions.
Incorporated in Dec. 1997, the SNIA is a US-based non-profit trade association dedicated to advance the adoption of storage networks as trusted and complete products and services across the IT industry. Currently, there are over 7,000 active members from 450 organizations under the SNIA.
During a press briefing Tuesday, P.K. Gupta, the association's vice chairman for South Asia, said it plans to educate 300 people in 12 months, with at least 25 percent of them SNIA-certified. SNIA South Asia covers the Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand markets.
Acknowledging that the storage community in this part of the world is still lacking in awareness about SNIA, Gupta said: "There's not much here yet [in terms of awareness]. We want to show end-users how to leverage the SNIA."
One of SNIA South Asia's key objective is to educate storage end-users on the benefits of information lifecycle management (ILM), he added. The association last year held Singapore's only ILM customer-focused event.
Over the next year, SNIA will run storage networking awareness camps for end-users, developers and value-added resellers in three to four countries, as well as engage government bodies such as Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), to promote storage management in the public sector, he said.
According to Rajesh Prabhakaran, chairman of SNIA South Asia, the association has been working with training institutions to deliver SNIA curriculum-based courses. To date, it has trained 400 students.
SNIA South Asia was established in 2004 in Singapore, and currently has 12 members comprising storage vendors, educational institutions and end-users. The India chapter of SNIA--which is separate from SNIA South Asia--has 63 members.