An Introduction to the Storage Networking Industry Association

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00:01 Michael Oros: Hi, everyone. My name is Michael Oros. I'm the executive director at SNIA. On behalf of everyone at the Storage Networking Industry Association, thank you to the FMS organizers for an opportunity to provide you an update with what SNIA and the industry have been up to in the last year.

For those of you not familiar with SNIA, a brief overview of what the organization is and who we are. SNIA is a nonprofit global organization that is dedicated to the storage industry and everything that is storage. We focus on standards development and education programs in the industry. For the last 20 plus years, SNIA has developed many technology standards, both hardware and software, that have been adopted and implemented in the industry. Some of these standards are now ANSI and ISO standards reaching global recognition and reference by the industry and government alike.

01:11 MO: In terms of who SNIA is, we are a group in the community of storage professionals that are dedicated to collaborating on standards and education. You will not find a more welcoming and dedicated community anywhere in the world than you will here at SNIA.

In terms of what we do, you heard about the standards development, but we also promote the adoption of technologies and have programs that accelerate that knowledge transfer and implementation and ramp-up of the technologies in the industry. Towards that effort, we also work with other industry organizations and have strategic alliances in place and joint programs with many organizations which you'll recognize the names and logos on the right side. Together, we focus on delivering a vendor-neutral education to the industry as well. It's one of the cornerstones of SNIA in our education program.

02:27 MO: There are nearly 200 companies from around the world that are dedicated to the standards development and education mission, with over 2,500 individuals that are active participants in SNIA programs. We reach regularly over 50,000 IT professionals with our updates, webcast, educational content, as well as for developers our Storage Developer Conference itself. Touching base on the SNIA educational resources, the SNIA educational library that we launched a couple of years ago is an invaluable resource that is free to you with a well-organized and searchable database of our recent presentations, videos, tutorials, and white papers. Please take a look at the link on this page for a first-hand experience and searching on your favorite topics that you're either an expert on and looking for updates, or it's an area that you're looking to learn more about, we have tutorials and presentations at all skill level from introductory to the most advanced.

03:51 MO: We've also grown our YouTube channel, known as SNIAVideo in the last years. This year, in particular, the consumption and viewership of that channel has grown tremendously. This is where we post our recorded webinars and materials from recent conferences such as the Storage Developer Conference, most recent one that we had virtual in September, and in early December we will have a Storage Developer Conference in India which will be virtual and available globally as well. Of course, our storage news and events keep you up to date on the latest happenings and the latest trends in technology as well.

04:39 MO: Last, but not least, in our educational resource is the SNIA dictionary. It may sound odd to you that I am talking to you about a dictionary, but this is the cornerstone and foundation of language in the storage industry. It is critical and important that we all utilize definitions and terms that are common across the industry, and in SNIA is where the industry comes together to refine and define those terms which are then adopted and utilized throughout universities, throughout the storage industry, government and throughout the world. This dictionary is constantly updated, and you will find the latest version searchable on the SNIA website.

In terms of SNIA's technical work scope, unlike other standards body organization, SNIA has a very broad scope in terms of what we cover in our work. The benefit of this is we actually look at storage end to end and understand the interdependencies and intricacies of the storage systems and solutions, considering the security aspects of it, the connectivity, the management, and of course, the physical storage itself.

06:13 MO: Our SFF group -- which focuses on connectors, form factor and transceivers -- continues to be a leader in the industry as the place to define and develop specifications for those areas. Of course, the solid-state storage and persistent memory work has continued to be on the forefront of SNIA education and presence in the industry. In the last year, you will have seen a lot of webcasts and information being released from SNIA on the computational storage. This is a growing area in the industry for innovation and the opportunity for standardization to enable broader collaboration and interoperability of solutions today and further down the line.

Some of the new programs I've started this year have brought some smart data accelerator interface work into SNIA. This is an area to closely keep an eye on in the next year. Additionally, we have added to our data governance and security with a new group focused on blockchain storage, and our cloud storage technologies continue to evolve as well.

07:35 MO: For information on these and more, please visit the SNIA website and look at our latest updates on the technical work that the industry is driving forward under SNIA. If you're not already a member in SNIA, you're missing out, so join us. It's your opportunity to influence the technology standards development now, to amplify your voice, whether you're a large or a small company in terms of the direction of these international standards. It's your opportunity to collaborate as well with your peers, gain insights and perspective that you may not have come to on your own. It's also an opportunity to grab that flag and charge forward in uncharted territory and lead the industry on the work that will continue to drive the innovation and the leadership in the storage industry.

08:32 MO: Brief overview of one of our initiative that does just exactly this type of work, our compute memory and storage initiative. It has a charter of technology education for a computational storage or system memory and all things solid-state. Part of its work is to accelerate the development of the technical work and to coordinate with the industry and give it visibility through webcast, presentation of industry events and developer conferences. Also, it runs programs such as the persistent memory hackathon, where you can learn hands-on how to convert your application to take advantage of the system memory and run it in an environment that is SNIA enabled.

To learn how compute memory and storage come together, please visit snia.org/cmsi. Hope you enjoy FMS this year in its virtual format. Please remember to visit the SNIA sponsor track on persistent memory and computational storage, also the sessions on form factors that are noted here at the bottom.

09:47 MO: Please do stop by the virtual booth and visit SNIA. Say hello to your colleagues from the industry that are manning the virtual booth, ask questions on any of the technologies and areas I've covered today, and also get your information on how to join the SNIA virtual reception this evening at 5:00 PM Pacific.

Thank you again. Enjoy FMS and look forward to seeing you in the virtual booth and also in person again soon.