Pioneering edition of SNIA Middle East Academy concludes on a high note

ISIT, a leading systems integrator of storage and information security solutions and the Storage Networking Industry Association of Europe (SNIA Europe), an association of producers and consumers of storage networking products, has revealed that the pioneering edition of the SNIA Middle East Academy, which was held at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Dubai, concluded on a high note. The event attracted the participation of more than 120 top industry professionalstaking part in the discussion of market trends in data protection and infrastructure while also showcasing the latest technologies in storage and security industries.

Present during the exciting one-day seminar were leading industry vendors in data protection and infrastructure, end users, qualifying channel partners and local market experts. The latest edition of the event threw the spotlight on key topics and challenges of the industry, which includes the daunting challenges for IT managers to combat the rising volume, cost, and complexity of storage; the need for quick decision making on other issues concerning storage architecture, design, operations and performance. Other topics covered during the event also included the increasing need for state-of-the-art storage technologies such as Software Defined Storage, Solid State Technologies such as Flash, and security best practices for protecting data on storage systems and networks to help enhance and improve efforts in protecting critical data of companies in the Middle East.

These are truly exciting times for this industry segment as the demand for storage has grown by more than 50 per cent Year-on-Year (YoY) in recent years. If storage costs continue their rapid rise then enterprises must learn to efficiently manage storage, particularly if they are to exploit new forms of information such as more detailed financial data, digital images in life sciences or video in media companies, said Mahesh Vaidya, CEO, ISIT and Chairman of Middle East Committee, SNIA Europe. We are happy at the strong response that we received from this event as it complemented SNIA Europes efforts to advance the interests of the storage industry by empowering organizations to translate data and information into business value by promoting the adoption of enabling technologies and standards. The initial feedback we received has been overwhelmingly positive and has inspired us to continue to improve the structure and focus of the event to keep it relevant and rewarding for all participants. We are already planning for its next edition in March 2016.

This was truly a landmark event as industry professionals from all over the region converged to learn more about new applications, technology trends and impact of new workloads like Big Data, Cloud and Analytics on Storage Industry in terms of performance, data protection, agility and data growth management. The event successfully met its objectives of raising awareness as well as it served as a networking platform among professionals within the storage networking industry. The seminars in particular, helped bring light to present technical and business IT issues to the participants, said Ossama El Samadoni, Director of Storage Solutions at Dell, Vice Chairman, Middle East Committee, SNIA Europe.

We are proud to be part of SNIA Europe and the SNIA Middle East Academy, and we will continue to support the association especially in participating at events like this with our long-standing experience and interest in storage and IT technologies. We have surely benefited from SNIAs in-depth vendor-neutral content along with views on emerging trends from leading storage vendors. This will help us as we continue to optimize and refresh our infrastructure to take advantage on newer technologies. We see an opportunity for this type of knowledge sharing to a broad audience across UAE and the Middle East. We appreciate the effort of the co-organizers ISIT and SNIA Europe to make this event a success, concluded Romilh Keetarat, IT Manager of One & Only Royal Mirage.

Leading IT vendors like Dell, Netapp, Hitachi Data Systems, Symantec-Veritas, VEEAM and Pure Storage, which are all members of SNIA Europe, shared the latest technology and market trends in data protection and infrastructure during the event. SNIA Middle East Academy also featured talks from top industry experts like Mahesh Vaidya, Chairman-Middle East Committee - SNIA Europe and CEO, ISIT; (Industry Update); Ossama El Samadoni, Vice Chairman-Middle East Committee - SNIA Europe and Director, Storage Solutions, Dell (Designing and Implementing Workload Optimized Storage); Jay Diddigi, Member, Middle East Committee SNIA Europe, Head of Information Security, ISIT (Practical, Secure Storage A Vendor Agnostic View); Andrew Mason, Chief Technologist, Middle East & Pakistan, Hitachi Data Systems (Software Defined Foundation for Enterprise Storage); Amer Chebaro, Regional Director for Gulf & KSA, Symantec-Veritas (Managing Information in a Hybrid World); Mo Dualeh, Regional Sales Manager for Middle East & N. Africa, Purestorage (The Impact of using All-Flash Arrays on Mission Critical Application Performance); Lars Ejskjaer, Technical Advisor, Netapp (Software-Defined Storage and Cloud: Get over the gravity of data) and Gregg Petersen, Regional Director, VEEAM (Enable the Always-On Business).