Whether storage is already a main focus of your career or may be advancing toward you, you’ll definitely want to attend the flagship event for storage developers – and those involved in storage operations, decision making, and usage – SNIA’s 19th annual Storage Developer Conference (SDC), September 11-14, 2017 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, California. Read More
Category: Events
Live Stream: What’s Happening with Enterprise Hyperscaler Storage
What are the issues emerging for Hyperscalers and storage? Find out on March 10th when I’ll be presenting at Storage Field Day. The brainchild of Stephen Foskett, Storage Field Day brings together thought leaders to share information and opinions in a presentation and discussion format with a carefully selected delegate panel of independent bloggers, speakers, freelance writers, and other social media tech influencers. Read More
Recognize Volunteer Contributions – Nominations Open for the SNIA Individual and Group Recognition Program
Each year, at the Annual Members Symposium, SNIA members recognize their own – volunteers and organizations who have dedicated expertise and time to contribute to the important work done by SNIA technical work groups, committees, and initiatives. SNIA recognizes with a “Volunteer of the Year” award an individual contributor who has stepped up to help SNIA achieve new and groundbreaking work or significantly advanced an existing program. Past winners have included Mark Carlson of Toshiba, Jim Ryan of Intel, and Alex McDonald of NetApp. 
With the Exceptional Leadership award, SNIA recognizes an individual who has advanced a cause for SNIA leading to an impact on the industry or the Association. Past winners have included Wayne Adams of EMC, Eric Hibbard of Hitachi, and Paul von Behren of Intel. SNIA also recognizes unsung heroes who work tirelessly under the radar expecting no attention but who in fact probably deserve more than the rest, and new contributors of the year who begin work in new areas.
SNIA also recognizes groups with several awards, including outstanding achievement of a SNIA Technology Community, significant contribution by a SNIA Committee or Regional Affiliate, significant impact by a previously existing SNIA Technical Work Group or Task Force, and contributions by new SNIA groups. 
Previous recipients have been acknowledged for their work in Persistent Memory, Solid State Storage, Storage Management, and Object Drives, and with SNIA India and the SNIA Global Steering Committee. A list of all individuals and groups recognized since 2008 can be found at http://www.snia.org/about/awards.
Also at the Annual Members Symposium, SNIA honors Deborah Kay Johnson, a SNIA member whose volunteer dedication to educating the industry on technology left a lasting impact, with the Deborah Kay Johnson Memorial Award. Past winners of this award for their outstanding contributions to education include Charles Tasse, Dell; Nancy Clay, SNIA; and David Deming, Solution Technology; all recipients are listed at http://www.snia.org/about/awards/dkj.
It’s time for the 2016 awards, and SNIA encourages all members to enter their nominations for both individual and group categories. The window to submit is open until December 9 and your selections can be made at this link. Awards will be announced during the SNIA Annual Members Symposium, January 17-20, 2017, at the Westin San Jose. Register here to attend the Symposium and view the agenda.
Hitachi Data Systems’ Hu Yoshida Featured in Keynote at SNIA Annual Members Symposium
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Annual Members Symposium is a must attend event for both SNIA members and interested colleagues. Held at the Westin San Jose in San Jose California from January 19-22, 2016, the Symposium offers four full days of collaboration, networking, and knowledge about the latest advances in cloud storage, Ethernet storage, solid state storage, storage management, green computing, and more. Register and learn more at http://www.snia.org/events/symp.
A highlight of every SNIA Symposium are keynotes from leaders in the industry, and 2016 is no exception. Whether you are a SNIA member, or thinking about 
SNIA membership, you are invited to attend a very special keynote presented on January 19 at 8:45 am on IT Trends that Matter in 2016, presented by Mr. Hubert Yoshida, CTO of Hitachi Data Systems. Mr. Yoshida will comment on how innovative technology companies that quickly capitalize on business opportunities and satisfy the demands of today’s empowered consumer have caused a wave of disruption. In 2016, businesses will turn to IT for solutions that will keep them competitive. Chief Information Officers will invest in faster delivery of applications and analytics, and transform IT by leveraging the third platform, social, mobile, analytics, and cloud. Mr. Yoshida will advise on how to avoid distractions and remain focused on the IT trends that matter in 2016.
Hubert Yoshida is responsible for defining the technical direction of Hitachi Data Systems. Currently, he leads the company’s effort to help customers address data life cycle requirements and resolve compliance, governance and operational risk issues. He was instrumental in evangelizing the unique Hitachi approach to storage virtualization, which leveraged existing storage services within Hitachi Universal Storage Platform® and extended it to externally-attached, heterogeneous storage systems.
Mr. Yoshida is well-known within the storage industry, and his blog has ranked among the “top 10 most influential” within the storage industry as evaluated by Network World. In October of 2006, Byte and Switch named him one of Storage Networking’s Heaviest Hitters and in 2013 he was named one of the “Ten Most Impactful Tech Leaders” by Information Week.
Hitachi Data Systems is a valued member of SNIA. Currently, Thomas Rivera, Technical Associate – File, Content & Cloud Solutions at Hitachi Data Systems, serves as the Secretary of the SNIA Board of Directors.
For the full agenda of activities and events at the SNIA Symposium visit http://www.snia.org/events/symp.
Join SNIA-CSI at the OpenStack Summit
Get the tips needed when implementing multiple cloud storage APIs. The SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) is hosting a Birds of a Feather session – Tips to Implementing Multiple Cloud Storage APIs at the OpenStack Summit in Paris on November 5th at 9:00 a.m. Room 212/213.
There are three main object storage APIs today; OpenStack’s Swift (open but not standardized), Amazon’s S3 (proprietary yet a defacto standard) and SNIA’s CDMI (an ISO standard). With three APIs to support, it might sound expensive or difficult to support all of them, yet not doing so could be costly when customers want innovation and industry standard solutions and interoperability in your product.
What about the similarities and differences between the APIs, and can they be reconciled? Can these APIs be effectively and efficiently implemented in a single product? I hope you’ll join us at this session to learn about and discuss various ways to cope with this situation. You will discover best practices and tips on how to implement these three protocols in your cloud storage solution.
Register now. I look forward to seeing you on November 5th at the OpenStack Summit.
What the CSI is Up to at SDC
What the Cloud Storage Initiative Is Doing At SDC
The SNIA Storage Developer Conference (SDC) is less than a week away. We’re looking forward to the conference and in particular want to make note of some exciting news and events that pertain to work the CSI is doing to promote standards that will increase the adoption, interoperability and portability of data stored in the cloud.
SDC Conference session: Introducing CDMI v1.1 – Tuesday, September 16th, 1:00 p.m. by David Silk. This session introduces the new CDMI 1.1 and provides an overview of capabilities the Technical Work Group have added to the standard, and what CDMI implementers need to know when moving from CDMI 1.0.2 to CDMI 1.1.
Cloud Interoperability Plugfest – Participants at the 12th Cloud Interoperability Plugfest will be testing the interoperability of their cloud storage interfaces based on CDMI. We always have a large showing of CDMI implementations at this event, but are also looking for implementations of Amazon S3, and OpenStack Swift, Cinder and Manila interfaces.
It’s not too late to register for this Plugfest. Find out how here.
SDC 2014 is going to be exciting and educational. It’s “one stop shopping” for IT professionals who focus on the tools, technologies and developments needed for understanding and implementing efficient data storage, management and security. The CSI hopes to see you there.
SNIA’s Events Strategy Today and Tomorrow
David Dale, SNIA Chairman
Last month Computerworld/IDG and the SNIA posted a notice to the SNW website stating that they have decided to conclude the production of SNW. The contract was expiring and both parties declined to renew. The IT industry has changed significantly in the 15 years since SNW was first launched, and both parties felt that their individual interests would be best served by pursuing separate events strategies.
For the SNIA, events are a strategically important vehicle for fulfilling its mission of developing standards, maintaining an active ecosystem of storage industry experts, and providing vendor-neutral educational materials to enable IT professions to deal with and derive value from constant technology change. To address the first two categories, SNIA has a strong track record of producing Technical Symposia throughout the year, and the successful Storage Developer Conference in September.
To address the third category, IT professionals, SNIA has announced a new event, to be held in Santa Clara, CA, from April 22-24 – the Data Storage Innovation Conference. This event is targeted at IT decision-makers, technology implementers, and those expected to influence, implement and support data storage innovation as actual production solutions. See the press release and call for presentations for more information. We are excited to embark on developing this contemporary new event into an industry mainstay in the coming years.
Outside of the USA, events are also critically important vehicles for the autonomous SNIA Regional Affiliates to fulfill their mission. The audience there is typically more biased towards business executives and IT managers, and over the years their events have evolved to incorporate adjacent technology areas, new developments and regional requirements.
As an example of this evolution, SNIA Europe’s events partner, Angel Business Communications, recently announced that its very successful October event, SNW Europe/Datacenter Technologies/Virtualization World, will be simply known as Powering the Cloud starting in 2014, in order to unite the conference program and to be more clearly relevant to today’s IT industry. See the press release for more details.
Other Regional Affiliates have followed a similar path with events such as Implementing Information Infrastructure Summit and Information Infrastructure Conference – both tailored to meet regional needs.
The bottom line on this is that the SNIA is absolutely committed to a global events strategy to enable it to carry out its mission. We are excited about the evolution of our various events to meet the changing needs of the market and continue to deliver unique vendor-neutral content. IT professionals, partners, vendors and their customers around the globe can continue to rely on SNIA events to inform them about new technologies and developments and help them navigate the rapidly changing world of IT.
Join the Cloud Storage Movement at SNIA’s Winter Symposium 2011
Every year the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has a gathering of their members in San Jose to coordinate the work of the various Technical Work Groups, Forums and Initiatives. This year the Symposium will take place January 24th – 27th, 2011 at the Sainte Claire Hotel in San Jose, CA. SNIA opens this Symposium to non-SNIA members who are evaluating membership, so feel free to attend. Please Register for the Symposium if you plan to be there in person.
SNIA Cloud Events
The Cloud Storage Technical Work Group (TWG) kicks off a multi-day face to face session starting at 1:00pm PT on Monday. We will be discussing the submission of CDMI for international standardization and continuing to discuss the scope of the next minor release (1.1) of CDMI. Topics include Federation and NoSQL among others. Bring your own ideas for how to improve CDMI. The full agenda has been posted publicly.
On Wednesday, the Cloud Storage Initiative will give an overview of their activities at a breakfast session starting at 8:30am. Then at noon on Wednesday, be sure and join us for the 2011 Activities Kickoff presentation in the Grande Ballroom. We will be showcasing all of the upcoming activities that you will want to be involved with over the next year. This session will be live streamed if you cannot make it in person. Regardless of whether you will be there in person or remote, please register for this update event (in addition to the Symposium registration above). More information.
Wednesday afternoon is the meeting of the Cloud Storage Initiative from 1-5pm (also in the Grande Ballroom). Be sure and join us and help plan the activities for the upcoming year.
Lastly, on Wednesday night there will be a Birds of Feather (BOF) session on a new group that is forming for the Archive and Preservation in the Cloud.
Whereas with Cloud Backup, the cloud is simply a repository of backup data, with Cloud Archive and Preservation, the Cloud is where the active processes occur that ensure long term retention, preservation and viability of data.
CDMI is uniquely designed to accommodate these needs with the Data System Metadata that it standardizes.
Cloud providers see the ability to offer more than just a best effort storage area with the promise of being the trusted steward of information for the long term.
Additional services such as eDiscovery and automatic format conversion can easily be offloaded to the cloud reducing costs.
Please join us Wednesday evening from 5:30pm – 7:00pm in the Grande Ballroom for a Birds of Feather session to kick off the formation of the CSI Archive/Preservation Special Interest Group (SIG). Light refreshments will be provided. If you would like to participate remotely, please use the following call in information:
Toll Free: 866-244-8528
International:+1-719-457-0816
Passcode: 510843#
Webex: http://snia.webex.com, Meeting Name: Archive and Preservation SIG
Meeting Password: cloud2011
SNIA Cloud Activities for 2010
Given that it’s the middle of summer it may be hot where you are, but the SNIA Cloud activities are heating up for the remainder of this year, and you don’t want to be left out.
SNIA Summer Symposium
At the end of July every year SNIA hosts a Symposium in San Jose for all the groups. The Cloud Storage TWG will be meeting from Monday afternoon through Thursday morning. The agenda is posted publicly and non-SNIA members are encouraged to attend.
Also at the Symposium Monday night is a Birds of Feather (BOF) session where we will be doing a demo of CDMI and OCCI working together in a common infrastructure. There will be time for details on the implementation and discussion afterward.
Thursday morning will be a special session to update folks on the SNIA Cloud activities for the remainder of the year. Besides the in person session at the Symposium, the session will also be broadcast as an online Webinar for folks who cannot make it in person. More information and a registration link is available on the SNIA Website.
Storage Developer Conference
In September will be the annual Storage Developer Conference (SDC) and this year Cloud is a big part of the agenda. There will be a CDMI Plugfest throughout the week, a Cloud Hands on Lab for developers, and Cloud Tracks all week including some big cloud related keynotes. But *wait* there’s more. Following SDC at the same hotel on Thursday September 23rd will be the…
SNIA Cloud Burst Event
This is an event that is squarely focused on Cloud Storage and brings together end users, cloud providers and storage vendors for a unique experience including demos, a showcase and in depth sessions on this part of the overall cloud industry. More information is available on the Cloud Burst page.
Storage Networking World
For the past two SNWs, there has been a Cloud Pavilion with great traffic and interest from the attendees for those that participate. At this fall’s SNW in Dallas, we will repeat this successful program with a limited number of slots. In addition we will again have a hands on lab for cloud that is always well attended (by end users only). If you are looking for a speaking opportunity, please consider being a sponsor of the cloud summit at SNW where end users come to learn about the cloud and the offerings that are available.
SNW Europe
Last year SNW Europe was a huge success for the SNIA Cloud Participants, with a year over year increase in record attendance. This year will see an increasing set of activities around the cloud, including a new Cloud Pavilion and Hands on Labs. There are a limited number of slots for these and they will sell out early. Included is an opportunity for a speaking engagement as well.
“Membership has it’s privileges”
Many of these opportunities are open only to Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) member companies. The membership fees help to fund these activities for the members and augment the work of the volunteers with paid resources. If you can help get your company involved, please contact Marty Foltyn (marty@bitsprings.com) for more information.