SNIA Expands Mission to Help IT Professionals Adopt Information Management Solutions

Expanded Mission & Vision Unveiled on 10 Year Anniversary and Reinforced by New Branding

San Francisco (October 9, 2007) The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) today unveiled an expanded mission and vision that positions the association to lead the industry in developing and promoting standards, technologies, and educational services to empower organizations in the management of information. Unveiled on the association's 10 year anniversary, the SNIA also launched new branding, which includes a Web site redesign and a new logo in support of the association's forward-looking mission and vision.

The SNIA's expanded 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. This mission will build upon work already started by the association to reach beyond the traditional storage market and into the broader technology and IT industry. Some of the past efforts that are driving this effort include the development of its Management Frameworks Technical Working Group and associated Reference Architectures, the efforts of the SNIA Data Management Forum, and the technical development of the forthcoming eXtensible Access Method (XAM) specification. Underlying the mission are three supporting vision statements that will help the association deliver value back to the industry:

1. Be a trusted advisor across all business segments and the recognized authority in storage technologies in support of information management
2. Be a catalyst for the development of information technologies and storage standards
3. Establish a strong international presence to address the needs and requirements of the local storage and information management marketplace

"We have made significant strides in executing on our previous set of strategic imperatives by developing IT standards and educational programs that support the industry by making storage networking easier to understand and simpler to implement. We are now looking forward to expanding on that mission by embracing storage and information technology," said Vincent Franceschini, Chairman of the SNIA. "Further, as we celebrate 10 years of working with the industry to promote the acceptance, deployment, and confidence in storage technologies, we've seen the storage industry landscape evolve to move up the stack and play a larger, more prominent role in the overall IT industry. To support that evolution, we are unveiling new branding that represents our expanded mission and vision for the future. It's an exciting confluence of events for the SNIA."

The expanded mission and vision and new branding build on a 10-year foundation of success for the Association that includes many achievements since its inception. Several of these include:

• The development of the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) and the eventual adoption of the standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as well as 45 vendors implementing the standard in 300 products worldwide
• Reaching more than 10,000 professionals with vendor-neutral education and certification programs
• The globalization of the association in Australia-New Zealand, North America-Canada, China, Europe, India, Japan and South Asia
• Launching or working with state-of-the-art technology centers, like those in Colorado Springs, Beijing, Bangalore, and Tokyo to help spur new technical development, innovation, and collaboration throughout all parts of the industry
• Co-owning and producing with Computerworld the leading storage conference for the last 8 years: Storage Networking World

For more information on the mission, vision, anniversary, and new branding for the SNIA, please visit www.snia.org.

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