SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - March 30, 2011) - The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) today announced several important activities reinforcing its ongoing commitment to providing contemporary, industry-specific education offerings to information storage professionals around the world.
SNIA recently appointed Paul Talbut of Sydney, Australia as SNIA's Global Education Director. Also, SNIA Education will continue to offer a suite of tutorials, on-site certification programs and hands-on training opportunities during the upcoming Storage Networking World (SNW) Spring 2011 conference in Santa Clara, Calif. A schedule of upcoming courses was also announced. Additionally, SNIA indicates continued momentum with its forthcoming certification offering with CompTIA.
"We are very pleased to have someone with Paul's extensive and international experience in the storage sector, ranging from events to education and training matters, accept the responsibility to drive our global education and certification strategies," said Leo Leger, SNIA Executive Director. "With recent employment taking off for storage professionals, a globally trained and certified workforce has become a top priority for CIOs, value-added resellers, outsourcers, and cloud service providers."
Next, the SNW agenda will feature nearly forty SNIA Tutorials. Always well-attended and highly-evaluated, SNIA tutorials are developed and delivered as vendor-neutral and will cover a broad range of topics including cloud computing, virtualization, security, data protection, and Green IT. SNIA has launched a program to video-record these tutorials and make them available via the internet.
Also, SNIA will again be offering a series of "Certification Preparation Classes" during SNW. These classes assist professionals in refreshing their background and insights required to prepare for Certification exams that SNIA will offer during SNW. Classes planned include: SNIA Storage Network Foundations, SNIA Qualified Storage Sales Professional, SNIA Qualified Data Protection Associate, SNIA Qualified Storage Virtualization Associate, SNIA Storage Networking Management & Administration, and SNIA Storage Networking Design & Assessment. A spring 2011 schedule of Storage Network Foundations classes was also announced as available at the SNIA Technology Center in Colorado Springs. Visit: http://www.snia.org/education/training_tc.
Always a highlight of SNW, the Hands-on Lab program offers attendees the opportunity to gain "real-life" lessons and experience from industry experts. Many of the lab topics mirror the topics of the SNIA tutorial program. This program is complimentary for SNW attendees and registration takes place on-site.
Lastly, progress from the alliance announced between SNIA and CompTIA in early January for their collaboration on the creation of a new certification, "CompTIA Storage+ Powered by SNIA," continues to proceed on schedule. The first Subject Matter Expert (SME) Workshop took place at the end of January and the next major project is the Item Writing Workshop in May, for which SME's are currently being recruited. The availability of this new exam to earn the credential is expected before the end of 2011.
For more information on SNW, see www.snwusa.com. Find information on the SNIA-CompTIA activity at http://www.snia.org/home/images/SNIACompTIA_StorageFAQ_Rev2_1_22_11.pdf
About SNIA
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not-for-profit global organization, made up of some 400-member companies 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.