New Credential Program by SNIA

The Storage Networking Industry Association announced its new SNIA Qualified Storage Sales Professional (SQSSP) credential to validate storage sales and marketing professionals’ comprehension of storage technology, concepts, terminology and end user solution requirements. Training and testing for the credential will take place at Storage Networking World Spring 2009, April 6-9, in Orlando, Fla.

The SQSSP credential signifies the storage professional can articulate and recommend storage technologies to fulfill end user data and business needs as well as effectively team with technical storage solution engineers and storage architects. Additionally, SNIA is providing 26 new tutorials spanning security, solid state storage, green storage, cloud storage and many other timely industry topics during SNW.

“This credential gives marketing and sales professionals – and their respective companies – the fundamental technical knowledge to recommend a breadth of storage solutions for their customers,” said Wayne M. Adams, Chair of the SNIA. “As part of the SNIA’s commitment to quality industry education, we created the SQSSP training and credential program to advance the knowledge and skills of these professionals to reduce their sales cycles and to deepen their customer relationships by becoming recognized as trusted technical advisors.”

Michael Moore, Director of Technology and Training, DataSpan, one of the first companies to embrace the SQSSP added: “Nearly 50 of our sales staff and management recently received the SNIA’s SQSSP credential and we were quite pleased with the process and results. DataSpan views the credential as a valuable investment for our complete sales force both inside and outside to help us best service our existing customers and secure additional deals when speaking to prospects. We’ve seen an immediate ROI on the credential program; based on initial feedback from our staff, the credential has given them increased confidence when dealing with customers, which is important not just for their individual professional development, but for DataSpan as a whole as we remain committed to being viewed as a trusted storage solutions provider. The SNIA effort has also given many manufacturers and suppliers a confidence in us and our ability to perform to their standards and business model nationally.”

During SNW, the 90-minute SQSSP exam is offered online following the classroom training sessions, giving newly trained professionals the flexibility to take it at the test site or in their hotel rooms.

The training and exam spans these topics:

• Defining and Identifying Storage Technology Basics
• Recognizing Opportunities for iSCSI Storage Networking Solutions
• Recognizing Opportunities for Fibre Channel Storage Networking Solutions
• Defining Storage Virtualization Concepts and Opportunities
• Defining Data Management Concepts and Opportunities
• Recognizing Backup/Recovery and Business Continuance Opportunities

At SNW Spring 2009, the SNIA will once again deliver its SNIA Tutorials program, with 63 tutorial sessions being taught throughout the four-day conference. SNIA tutorials are designed with the latest technical and business (IT) topics in a vendor neutral format for professional and technical audiences ranging from CIOs to IT operations staff as well as business managers to software/hardware engineers.

The SNIA Tutorials, all of which are refreshed or newly developed specifically for this conference, will be delivered across 10 topic tracks which include: Data Protection and Management, File Systems and File Management, Storage Management, Networking, Professional Development, Security, Virtualization and Standards, Green Storage, Solid State Storage and Applications Infrastructure.