New SNIA Regional Committee in Middle East

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Europe announced the formation of a new regional committee to support its members in providing vendor-independent educational programs to end users of storage and information management technologies in the Middle East. The Mid-East Regional Committee became active in October 2008 and is chaired by Mahesh Vaidya of ISIT AE, supported by a leadership team including Vice Chair Tony Ward (HDS), Channel Liaison Irfaan Harris (Cisco) and End User Facilitator Shaik Asif (IBM).

Other founding members of the committee include Brocade, EMC, HP, NetApp, Sun, and Symantec. The committee is actively recruiting other members companies to get involved.

"The storage industry is moving at a tremendous pace worldwide, and many businesses find it hard to keep track of all the new technologies that can be used to solve their pressing business issues," said Mahesh Vaidya, the newly appointed Chair of the Mid-East Committee. "It is a privilege to lead the SNIA Europe Middle East Regional Committee and we look forward to making a real contribution towards helping Middle Eastern businesses make informed decisions about how the latest storage technologies can help solve their business issues and derive maximum return on IT investment."

"Since becoming chairman of SNIA Europe two years ago we have witnessed unprecedented growth; this is largely thanks to the work of the many member volunteers and industry experts that devote time and effort to develop and communicate our educational initiatives throughout EMEA," said Juergen Arnold, Chairman, SNIA Europe. "Now, thanks to the dedication and commitment from local executives of our member companies, we are thrilled to have created the Mid-East Committee, providing provide direct support to the dynamic and fast-growing enterprise IT markets in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states for the first time."

The new committee will become immediately involved in developing the educational program for the third annual Storage Academy, slated for 3rd February 2009 in Dubai.

The role of the regional committees is to deliver SNIA Europe’s mission and programs to the local markets in EMEA, to regularly engage with local end user groups and channel representatives, to deliver educational programs and to support major local storage events. Each regional committee has an elected chair, vice chair, end-user facilitator, and channel liaison.