SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 18, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA), a non-profit international organization of manufacturers, systems integrators and vendors today announced its newly elected Board of Directors and strategic roadmap and direction for 2007/2008. With more than 80 percent market share today and projected growth through 2010, Fibre Channel technology continues to be the data center standard as indicated by the Gartner External Controller-Based Disk Storage WW 2006-2010 -- October 6, 2006 report.
Today, the FCIA organization consists of over 80 companies globally, all of which are leaders in the Fibre Channel industry and continue to provide thought leadership, education and guidance to the growing storage networking market. The newly elected members of the 2007/2008 FCIA Board of Directors are as follows:
FCIA Officers:
* Chairman: Skip Jones -- QLogic
* Vice Chairman: Tom Hammond-Doel -- LSI
* Secretary: Jeff Eckard -- NetApp
* Treasurer: Kevin Burbank -- PMC Sierra
Members at Large:
* Martin Czekalski -- Seagate
* Steven Wilson -- Brocade
* Sean Fitzpatrick -- Hewlett Packard
"The FCIA is honored to work with leading organizations that continuously bring cutting-edge Fibre Channel solutions to the market," said Skip Jones, Chairman FCIA. "The growth in membership is proof that shows Fibre Channel continues to be a viable and timeless technology that provides a long-term investment within the storage networking market."
Fibre Channel Continues to Lead the Pack
Today every large institution and enterprise globally runs its mission-critical business applications on Fibre Channel SANs. Fibre Channel technology continues to prove its end-user value in superior business application uptime, business continuity, faster performance and increased security.
As with other technologies, the continued viability of Fibre Channel requires constant innovation and refinement. The Fibre Channel Industry Association and its high-profile members share a common mission of advancing the adoption of Fibre Channel networks as a highly stable and robust technology that ensures investment protection and value for the enterprise end-user.
With the mission in mind, FCIA's technology roadmap continues to evolve, define and support innovative Fibre Channel technologies developed by its member companies to further the industry as a whole. In addition, the FCIA collaborates with both the T11 organization and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) to further educate and evangelize the IT industry on Fibre Channel and its recent advancements.
In recent Fibre Channel developments, the FCIA openly supports development around 8 Gb/s (8GFC) technologies doubling the performance of today's 4Gb/s (4GFC) Fibre Channel products and maintains full backward compatibility, and also the upcoming FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) standard.
A dedicated committee has recently been established for FCoE in order to evangelize and educate the storage community. FCoE expands Fibre Channel into the Ethernet environment; the combination of these leading technologies -- FC and Ethernet -- provides more options to end users for SAN connectivity and networking.
FCIA plans to showcase and demonstrate these leading Fibre Channel advancements at Storage Networking World in Dallas, Texas the week of October 15, 2007. For additional SNW information, please go to www.snwusa.com.
About FCIA
The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) is a non-profit international organization whose sole purpose is to act as the independent technology and marketing voice of the Fibre Channel industry. We are committed to helping member organizations promote and position Fibre Channel, and to providing a focal point for Fibre Channel information, standards advocacy, and education.
FCIA members include manufacturers, system integrators, developers, vendors, industry professionals, and end users. Our member-led working groups and committees focus on creating and championing the Fibre Channel technology roadmaps, targeting applications that include data storage, video, networking, and storage area network (SAN) management. For more info, go to http://www.fibrechannel.org