The Association has plans to extend its Technology Center Champions Program internationally in 2006.

The SNIA Technology Center provides year-round availability and remote hosting of the technologies and equipment that drive the SNIA's involvement throughout the storage industry. This new program will help ensure that the latest technologies are implemented and used for the development of storage standards and interoperability testing, as well as educational programs and solution demonstrations of cutting-edge technologies at Storage Networking World conferences around the world.

"The SNIA Technology Center plays the critical role in the association's activities and efforts focused on uniting the storage industry," said Rick Bauer, Technology Director at the SNIA. "The contributions and involvement from the companies throughout the industry will be paramount as we look to expand and increase the capabilities of the facility to meet our on-going global demands. The SNIA thanks Computer Associates, HP, QLogic and Raritan for their contributions to the Technology Center Champions Program."

The new SNIA Technology Center Champions Program has four levels of membership -- Friends of SNIA, Petabyte Circle, Exabyte Circle and Zettabyte Circle -- each providing the member company with significant marketing benefits for making a contribution. Highlights of the program benefits include company and product contribution visibility within Technology Center Champions Program collateral, Program listings in certain SNIA publications, publicity support at the time of the contribution and recognition at SNIA sponsored events and programs such as the recently expanded Hands-On Lab.

"CA is pleased to support the SNIA's Technology Center Champions Program, which will facilitate the delivery of standards, education and valuable services to storage professionals around the world," said Steve Widen, director of product marketing at CA. "We will continue to work closely with SNIA to support their important industry initiatives."

"HP is a strong supporter of the SNIA and committed to the development of storage management industry standards to improve interoperability and manageability in storage infrastructures," said Rich Escott, director of storage management software of the StorageWorks Division at HP. "We are proud to participate in the Technology Center Champions Program and are donating HP Storage Essentials and HP StorageWorks Enterprise File Services (EFS) WAN Accelerators to further the organization's expansion."

"QLogic is proud to support the SNIA's Technology Center Champions Program," said Skip Jones, director of planning and technology at QLogic Corporation. "We recognize the importance of the Technology Center in advancing the storage industry as a whole and hope that our contributions will encourage other industry leaders to support this important initiative."

"We are proud to share Raritan's remote access and service management solutions with the Technology Center, and to support SNIA's important charter to help advance storage technologies, develop standards and promote interoperability," said Sev Onyshkevych, vice president Marketing at Raritan. "Our involvement with the center will also help us better understand the IT management issues facing the storage industry, so that we can better serve customers."

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not-for-profit global organization made up of more than 420 active member companies plus their worldwide affiliates and close to 7,100 active individuals spanning virtually the entire storage industry. SNIA members share the common goal of advancing the adoption of storage networks as complete and trusted solutions. 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.