STORAGE

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced today that, in conjunction with Infinity I/O, it will launch a Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (FC-SAN) certification program in late October in the U.S. and Europe to test IT professionals' expertise in Fibre Channel-based SANs. The SNIA FC-SAN Certification Program is the first module of the SNIA Storage Networking Certification Program (SNIA SNCP), which will include modules on other storage networking topics. "The ultimate goal of the SNIA SNCP is to provide uniform standards by which the knowledge and abilities of people working with storage networks of all kinds can be judged. We have begun with Fibre Channel because that's where the action is among the user community today," said Paul Massiglia, chairperson of the SNIA Education Committee, which is overseeing the SNIA's certification activities. Infinity I/O, a provider of training and education for individuals employed in various technological fields, initiated the creation and development of the FC-SAN Certification Program in response to the rapid growth of the storage networking marketplace and a strong, worldwide industry demand for a single uniform standard to measure individual knowledge of system-level, heterogeneous, open-system network technologies. "Infinity I/O set out to develop the FC-SAN certification when we saw the need to develop a vendor-neutral certification for the open-systems environment of SANs, and we felt it important to partner with the SNIA, which represents the storage networking industry," said Dayne Myers, CEO of Infinity I/O. The SNIA and Infinity I/O have defined four levels of certification for the FC-SAN program: Level 1 - Fibre Channel Storage Networking Professional; Level 2 - Fibre Channel Storage Networking Practitioner, Level 3 - Fibre Channel Storage Networking Specialist, and Level 4 - Fibre Channel Storage Networking Expert. Certification for Levels 1 and 2 will be provided in October, while the exams for Levels 3 and 4 will begin next year. The certification has been developed with the highest professional standards. The principles and processes employed by Infinity I/O conform to the Standards for Education and Psychological Testing. The Infinity I/O approach has been audited and validated by a team of psychometricians specializing in professional certification methodology, and all the questions on the certification exams have been reviewed and approved by a group of industry storage networking experts on behalf of the SNIA. Topics in the overall SNIA SNCP will include Networked Attached Storage, IP Storage, as well as applications such as backup and restore and capacity planning. More information on the SNIA SNCP and the FC-SAN Certification Program can be found at www.snia.org/sncp