Appendix D. The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)

Industry associations embody the contradiction between the competitive interests of vendors and their recognition that their own success is tied to the success of the industry as a whole. The appropriate homily for industry associations is "rising waters raise all ships," although occasionally a gunboat will appear, the sign of a vendor's competitive drive going unhecked. An industry association may focus primarily on marketing campaigns to raise end-user awareness of the industry's technology, or it may combine marketing and technical initiatives to promote awareness and to formulate standards requirements. The Fibre Channel Industry Association, for example, has organized activities to promote out-bound messaging through Networld+Interop, Comdex, and other venues as well as technical work on the SANmark program for standards compliance. For standardization, the FCIA has worked primarily through the NCITS T11 Committee, to the extent of holding FCIA meetings and NCITS T11 sessions concurrently.

The umbrella organization for all storage networking technologies is the Storage Networking Industry Association, or SNIA. SNIA has more than 300 members, representing vendors and customers from a wide variety of storage disciplines including management software, storage virtualization, NAS, Fibre Channel, IP storage, and disk and tape and solutions providers who offer certified configurations and support. As with other industry associations, the SNIA is a volunteer organization with only a few paid staff positions. Its activities are funded by the monetary and personnel contributions of the membership. The general mission of the SNIA is to promote the adoption of storage networking technology as a whole, with the membership itself providing the momentum to accomplish this goal. The more the membership invests in financial and volunteer resources, the more the organization can accomplish.