The Storage industry is expected to record revenues of USD 372 million with a potential to reach USD 700 million in the next three years. This makes it one of the most exciting areas to work in within the technology industry today.

With a recently reshuffled board and new initiatives, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) India is keen to improve storage education through a network of franchises, and increase the number of certified storage networking professionals in India. It is also drafting new standards towards power measurement and energy conservation. Vijay Pradhan, Executive Director, SNIA India shares his plans with Brian Pereira

What’s the mission of SNIA? How many members does it have?
SNIA is a non-profit storage association. It has memberships from three different segments in the industry: the tech vendors, end users and technologists that provide inputs for the development of various storage products.

The foremost objective and mission of SNIA is to promote storage standards and technologies. The second objective is to provide educational services to end users and companies who want to exploit storage technologies to make better productive use of storage.

The common goal is (to gain) acceptance for and to drive confidence in storage related architectures and systems.

Worldwide we have more than 7,000 members including 400 storage vendors. Almost everyone in the storage business is a member of SNIA.

What’s your worldwide and India charter?
Worldwide, SNIA provides a platform for the vendors and users of storage technology to come together to exchange views, to have peer reviews—these serve as inputs for creating new standards for storage equipment. The end result is that this will help them use the equipment in a more productive way.

In India our focus is fairly nascent since we set up base here just a year ago. We are now trying to improve participation in SNIA India. Our initial focus is creating education franchisees in India. Certifications exist for hardware and software technologies.  

For instance, you have Oracle or Microsoft certification. But it’s rare to come across a certified storage networking professional. So our initial aim is to provide a platform for imparting storage education. Then, on the basis of education we want to provide opportunities for certification for engineers who want to create a career in this area.

In the past year we have worked on setting up our infrastructure, establishing education franchisees, and increasing membership.

The other initiative is the Technical Working Group (TWG) that we have in SNIA India. These groups create technical whitepapers and help publish material of interest to the end user community in India. For example, we hear of new technologies like cloud computing. It is important to understand that in the context of the Indian user. What are the concerns they should have? Which kind of industries should look at cloud computing from a storage perspective?