SNIA Technology Center Relocated

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced the opening of a new Technology Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

The new facility, which will have more than 8,600 square feet of data center, computer lab, office, classroom and meeting space, has relocated to the LSI Corporation campus in ArrowsWest after nine years at the HP complex in Colorado Springs Technology Park. Having hosted approximately 4,000 computer engineers, technicians and IT professionals who have participated in more than 500 technical standards development, interoperability testing, and education activities, the SNIA Technology Center has been and will continue to be the home of the Association’s industry-wide technical innovation and professional education.

"We are very proud of the industry milestones and accomplishments our Technology Center has enabled and want to thank HP for their partnership, leadership, generosity and support over the last nine years," said Wayne M. Adams, Chair of the SNIA. "As we enter 2010, the $60B storage industry continues to evolve and the new SNIA Technology Center will serve our core mission to advance data management and storage networks. We enthusiastically retained Colorado Springs as the ideal location for our Technology Center due to its deep regional talent pool and strong technical, business, government and educational communities. We look forward to continuing to bring the worldwide storage and data management industry together in this LSI Corporation facility."

"Colorado Springs is delighted to be home to SNIA and the new SNIA Technology Center," commented Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera. "The region’s technology base is a major component of our local economy. SNIA’s presence and its global reach goes a long way in highlighting the significance of this sector in the Pikes Peak Region."

The new SNIA Technology Center will serve as the Association’s virtual and in-person ‘sandbox’ for the industry to advance data management and networked storage programs utilizing a modern facility and infrastructure. Several of the technology programs housed at the facility address energy efficiency, storage management, standards conformance, data archiving and cloud computing. Additionally, the SNIA will deliver scheduled and on-demand specialized educational programs while continuing to host Colorado Front Range professional IT society meetings and has space available for strategic IT and standards projects.

Vic Mahadevan, vice president of marketing and product management, Engenio Storage Group, LSI Corporation, added:" LSI is excited about the opportunity to host the new SNIA Technology Center at our state-of-the-art facility in Colorado Springs. As a SNIA member since its inception and a long-standing holder of a seat on the board of directors, we have observed the value that a collaborative, vendor-agnostic technology center has delivered to the industry and we look forward to being a key contributor to the SNIA’s continued efforts to advance storage networking solutions."

For the past nine years, HP’s facilities have housed the SNIA Technology Center in which SNIA along with its partners and organization members have delivered programs including international IT standards and best practices aimed at storage security, environmental efficiency, interoperability and software development. The Technology Center’s training and educational programs have transferred career-specific knowledge and technical skills to thousands of professionals who manage data center storage operations and develop storage products and technologies. The robust infrastructure was generously augmented throughout the years with several HP technology donations along with contributions from many other SNIA member companies.

Additional SNIA Technology Center Activities

• Green Storage: The new facility will continue to be the base camp for the Association’s green storage efforts, building on its work with the ENERGY STAR program, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the European ‘Code of Conduct.’ As part of the Association’s work to embrace green innovation, the SNIA has decreased the carbon footprint of the Technology Center by deploying virtualization technologies which have decreased the actual footprint of the data center space as well as eliminating the need to ship and transport computer hardware to a number of dispersed industry events around the world.
• Storage Security: Contributing industry guidelines and industry-leading direction in areas such as eDiscovery and a ‘Guide to Data-at-Rest’ work done at the center addressing concerns around data privacy, integrity, availability and liability. Technical work supporting this are regularly conducted at the SNIA Technology Center.
• Solid State Storage: The Technology Center will be the home for vendor-neutral performance testing and benchmarking of the quickly evolving and growing solid state ‘flash’ storage marketplace once this service is requested by the industry.
• Standards and Technical Development: Industry-wide standards and technical development and testing focused on a variety of areas from interoperability to data and information management.

"SNIA, the Storage Networking Industry Association, has been an important player in Colorado Springs for the past several years. The Technology Center has served as a world-renowned research and development laboratory providing the data storage industry with modern, innovative solutions to the ever increasing demands of consumers. We are pleased and excited that SNIA will continue its relationship with our community. This lab plays an important role in Colorado Spring’s further economic development as an innovation leader, as prescribed by the Operation 6035 study," said Mike Kazmierski, President and CEO, The Colorado Springs Regional Economic Development Corporation.

"Our long, multifaceted association with the SNIA has benefited our students, faculty and school because our classroom and online students have access to not only advanced hardware but association with the people of SNIA and the storage industry. Access to the latest developments in Green storage, protection of private information, standards and practices has had good influence on our programs and we believe the ongoing access to the technology in this facility really delivers value to our students. At the end of the day, it’s all about the students," said Dan Likarish, Assistant Professor, Regis University.

"As a long time supporter of the storage industry, member of the SNIA and active participant in test labs, the SNIA Technology Center delivers something that no other facility around the world does ‘ a home for vendor-neutral training, testing and standards development. As the sheer amount of data created by consumers and businesses around the globe continues to increase significantly, the storage industry is quickly adapting and increasing in terms of importance on several levels. It will be essential for this Technology Center to continue to deliver best practices that help users around the world," said Dennis Martin, President, Demartek.

"The SNIA Lab provided an isolated, secure lab facility for our engineers and enabled access to the vendors’ engineers. The fact that the SNIA Technology Center provides a comprehensive infrastructure and support services has allowed the engineers to maintain momentum throughout the engagement," said Daniel Klute, the technical lead for SAIC.

"The FCIA has been a long time partner of SNIA and once again we look forward to supporting the opening of the SNIA Technology Center. The opening of the SNIA technology Center supports both FCIA and SNIA’s mission to help vendors and end-users collaborate to exchange knowledge and impart experience around current and emerging data center technologies," said Skip Jones, Chairman, FCIA.

"iPERMS has generated tremendous cost avoidances and efficiency increases for Army Active Duty, National Guard, and Reserve forces. The system eliminates the need to store paper military personnel records, and we no longer have independent silos of personnel information scattered across the Total Force," said Jim Riggs, iPERMS (Interactive Personnel Electronic Records Management System), Program Manager and U.S. Army General.

"The SNIA Technology Center does the storage industry a great service by providing a facility and an impetus for storage vendors to physically come together, along with their latest products, to do the unglamorous but absolutely essential work of standards development and compatibility testing, so that corporate data centers can deploy storage networks that ‘just work’," said Richard Lary, Corporate Fellow, Xiotech Corporation.