NEW DELHI, INDIA: Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) India, the Indian chapter of SNIA global, announced its remarkable achievements in India, which reflects their expansion in strength to strength. SNIA India also shared their major strategies to increase the number of storage professionals in the country to negate the shortage of skilled professionals in storage industry.

With the completion of five successful years, SNIA India exhibited tremendous commitment for Indian market and has grown from merely 12 members to 100 members today. This large member community is encompassing individual, corporate, end-users, partner and IT vendors. This phenomenon growth not only reflects SNIA India's success, but also shows the deep intention of Indian storage industry to strengthen this association, which eventually can guide and direct the country's storage fraternity towards strong and mutually beneficial future.

Sharad Srivastava, Chairman, SNIA India, said: "SNIA India has received astounding response in recent years from the industry. We have also taken initiatives in educating the industry on data storage and working on technical issues under technical working group (TWG). We are confident that in future we will continue to add value to the industry by creating awareness on storage and related storage fields."

In another step towards narrowing the gap between supply and demand of skilled storage professionals, SNIA India has announced initiatives to spread their educational training network across the country through formation of efficient franchise network. These franchise institutes will offer storage related educational and training courses to students and professionals besides offering them hands-on experience also.

SNIA India has already contracted with some institutes as franchise but looking forward to increase the base very soon. Already this initiative has achieved significant momentum and has generated enormous interest among storage industry professionals. SNIA India is aiming to create around 1,000 SNIA certified storage professionals by the end of next year.

Another major step from SNIA India is to establish a pool of trainers. A pool of 20 trainers has been already trained under the "train the trainer" program this year. Country needs professional trainers who are capable in undertaking specialized training program to produce skilled storage professionals.

To explain the strategies on education initiatives, Bala Guna, Director, Education Initiatives, SNIA India, added: "Our first phase of implementing storage education franchises has taken off well with finalization of franchises in some of the metro cities. We are very confident that this initiative will be able to fill some gap between demand and supply of certified storage professionals."