Storage to the forefront

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ARNOLD: the SNIA Europe Academy has been evolving, as SNIA itself has.

International storage standards body, SNIA, will focus on data protection for enterprises at its upcoming industry event in Dubai.

For the second year in a row, storage standards body, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is bringing its SNIA Europe Academy event to Dubai in February.

The event is expected to bring together vendors as well as end-users for a day's discussion of the latest trends as well as issues in the storage industry in the region.

The programme is part of the larger SNIA which is spread across the whole of the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. SNIA is made up of industry professionals working to provide a better set of storage products and technologies.

"The SNIA Europe Academy has been evolving, as SNIA itself has, depending on the latest trends in the market and the new technologies that are emerging and that need to be correctly positioned and standardised to meet customer needs.

Our main focus for the 2008 event will be around data protection, a key area for all organisations to understand and address in order to fulfil the increasing amount of legislation around the globe around long-term archiving.

In addition to the focus area, we will present on additional topics to cover the latest storage technologies and upcoming SNIA standards," says Juergen Arnold, chairman for SNIA Europe.

After the establishment of the flagship conference, SNW Europe, that has taken place in Frankfurt each year since 2004, SNIA Europe launched the Academy programme in 2005 specifically to bring the SNIA message and content to the outlying parts of EMEA.

The programme was first launched in Eastern Europe at the end of 2005 and has gradually spread out since then; so it actually arrived in the Middle East less than 18 months after its start.

According to Arnold, there are several more markets that have to be visited and they are also considering taking the event to other venues in the Middle East.

SNIA is joined by vendors such as IBM, Pillar Data Systems and CommVault for the event, where they expect to bring in more than the 150 attendees who were part of the event's success last year.

"The importance of the SNIA Europe Academy programme for end-users and partners alike is that it brings guaranteed vendor-neutral educational content right to their doors.

This information can help demystify some of the latest storage and data management technologies and standards, therefore helping the attendees better understand how the industry is moving and what their options are in implementing their own strategies," adds Arnold.

SNIA itself has no physical presence in any part of EMEA but the elected board of directors (which has 12 members) meets every month and communicates with the members of the region by regular e-mails, newsletters and open committee meetings.

"We are looking to establish a committee in the Middle East very soon and will be using the Academy to seek volunteers from the local IT storage community to help achieve that goal," concludes Arnold.

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