The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) today unveiled an expanded mission to lead industry in the development of standards, technologies and educational services.

Launched as part of SNIA's 10 year anniversary, the industry group has undertaken a Web site redesign and unveiled a new logo in support of its vision.

Past initiatives undertaken by SNIA include the development of its Management Frameworks Technical Working Group and associated Reference Architectures, the efforts of the SNIA Data Management Forum, and the technical development of the forthcoming eXtensible Access Method (XAM) specification.

Underlying the mission, SNIA's goal is to be a trusted advisor to business and recognised authority on storage technologies, a catalyst for standards and to address the needs of the local storage and information management marketplace.

SNIA ANZ chairman, Jacob Van der Eyk, said the group has made significant strides in executing on its previous set of strategic imperatives by developing IT standards and educational programs that support the industry.

"This is in addition to making storage networking easier to understand and simpler to implement. We are now looking forward to expanding on that mission by embracing storage and information technology," Van der Eyk said.

"We've seen the storage industry landscape evolve to move up the stack and play a larger, more prominent role in the overall IT industry. To support that evolution, we are unveiling new branding that represents our expanded mission and vision for the future."

Van der Eyk said the group's most outstanding achievements in the past decade have been the development of the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) and the eventual adoption of the standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as well as 45 vendors implementing the standard in 300 products worldwide

SNIA now reaches more than 10,000 professionals with vendor-neutral education and certification programs

There is also the globalisation of the association in Australia-New Zealand, North America-Canada, China, Europe, India, Japan and South Asia

SNIA is a not-for-profit global organisation 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.