SNIA Green Storage Initiative Formed to Advance Energy Efficient Storage Networking Solutions

Dallas, TX (October 15, 2007) - The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) today announced the formation of the SNIA Green Storage Initiative, which will be dedicated to advancing energy efficiency and conservation in all networked storage technologies in an effort to minimize the environmental impact of data storage operations. The SNIA Green Storage Initiative's scope of work will span all shared storage technologies including disk and tape systems, server connectivity, storage appliances, fabrics and other storage network infrastructure, file services, and storage applications

Realizing the opportunity and the role that networked storage plays within a data center's overall energy consumption, many storage vendors have joined the SNIA Green Storage Initiative. These early members of the Initiative include 3PAR®, Brocade, COPAN Systems, Inc., Dell, EMC, EqualLogic, Emulex, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, Intransa, IBM, LSI, Microsoft, NetApp, QLogic, Seagate, Sun, Xiotech, and Xyratex. The Initiative members and others who join will complement the work of the SNIA's Green Storage Technical Work Group.
As part of its activity, the SNIA Green Storage Initiative will be developing tutorials and educational material, white papers, and best practices for energy efficient data center storage operations. Our green efforts will include helping our member companies design more energy efficient products, investigating specific technologies such as data de-duplication, thin provisioning and tape-based archiving as well as providing education that can help contribute to energy efficiency.

The Green Storage Initiative will also act as the SNIA liaison to other allied organizations such as The Green Grid and the EPA to collaborate on the development of more environmentally friendly data center solutions.

“Many government agencies worldwide have begun investigating data center energy consumption , and the SNIA is very interested in working with them to establish consistent best practices and ways to fairly measure and manage the energy consumption of shared storage technologies,” said Vincent Franceschini, SNIA Chair, Board of Directors. “As with all SNIA Initiatives, our aim is to benefit end users, vendors, the channel and, in this case, the environment with our Green Storage Initiative.”

At Storage Networking World Fall 2007 in Dallas, TX, the association will be delivering a full agenda of green activities including tutorials, main stage presentations, and a Birds-of-a-Feather breakfast for attendees interested in networking with other environmentally savvy IT professionals.

For more information on the SNIA Green Initiative, please visit www.snia.org/green.

About the SNIA

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not-for-profit global organization, made up of some 400 member companies and 7,000 individuals spanning virtually the entire storage industry. SNIA's mission is to lead the storage industry worldwide in developing and promoting standards, technologies, and educational services to empower organizations in the management of information. To this end, the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education, and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market. For additional information, visit the SNIA web site at www.snia.org.