SNIA Announces Solid State Storage Initiative

Business Wire, Sept 22, 2008

Initiative Aimed at Education, Standards, Collaboration for Solid State Storage Technology

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced today at the SNIA 2008 Storage Developer Conference the formation of the Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI), which will serve to foster the growth and success of the market for solid state storage in both commercial and consumer environments.

As a collective Initiative of industry leaders committed to becoming the recognized authority for storage made from non-volatile, solid state memory devices, the SSSI will coordinate and conduct education efforts for the vendor and user communities, perform market outreach highlighting the virtues of solid state storage and further the development of standards specific to the technology.

"The industry is closely monitoring the growth of solid state storage drives as well as making predictions about this technology's future," said Vincent Franceschini, Chair of the SNIA. "SNIA has created the SSSI to propel the solid state technology in the storage industry. Drawing from the experience and expertise of its existing and new SNIA members, the new Initiative will work to advance the knowledge and acceptance of solid state storage by evaluating and contributing to the standards necessary for industry-wide adoption, as well as through education, training, and best practices."

The SSSI is responsible for coordinating and managing all activities within the SNIA related to solid state storage, including those for education, technical development, business development, marketing and implementation. In addition, the SSSI will collaborate with other organizations and initiatives to further the dialogue on solid state storage as well as leverage the SNIA International organization to promote solid state storage on a global scale.

"It's both encouraging and timely to see this new Initiative from SNIA," said Mark Peters, analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "With the various implementations of solid state technologies poised to make a significant impact on the storage market over the next few years (in terms of I/O rather than capacity), it's gratifying to see this co-operative effort around standards and education, since those are two of the current impediments to fast adoption as the technologies mature and become integrated into more vendor offerings."

The SSSI elected its first Board of Directors last week. Members and their roles include:

* Phil Mills (IBM), Chair

* Val Bercovici (NetApp), Vice-Chair

* Jieming Zhu, (HP), Treasurer

* Marius Tudor (BiTMICRO)

* Rob Peglar (Xiotech)

* Jonathan Thatcher (Fusion-io)

* Karen Huffstutter (LSI)

Founding members of the SSSI representing both new and existing SNIA members and a variety of segments of the IT industry include: Adtron Corporation a subsidiary of SMART Modular Technologies, BiTMICRO Networks, Calypso Systems, Inc., Coughlin Associates, Inc., EMC Corporation, Emulex Corporation, Enterprise Strategy Group, Fusion-io, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, Intel Corporation, LSI Corporation, Microsoft Corp., Mtron Storage Technology, NetApp, Patni Computer Systems, Ltd, Pliant Technology, PMC-Sierra, QLogic Corporation, SanDisk Corporation, Seagate Technology, Silicon Systems, STEC, Inc., Sun Microsystems, Texas Memory Systems, the University of Virginia, and Xiotech Corporation.

For more information on the SSSI, please visit www.snia.org/sssi.> 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.