CompTIA and SNIA Collaborating

CompTIA, a non-profit association for the information technology (IT) industry, and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), the non-profit association for the storage industry, are collaborating to develop and market a new professional certification for IT workers responsible for storage networking and information management.

The credential, CompTIA Storage+ Powered by SNIA, will be a validation of the knowledge and skills necessary to support various solutions and technologies in data storage, storage networking, data protection, and the underlying interconnect technologies. A beta release of this new examination and certification is scheduled for Q2 in 2011 with global availability in the second half of 2011.

"Combining the thought and technical leadership of SNIA with the global certification development and management capabilities of CompTIA will result in a credential recognized globally as the standard for validating IT professionals who manage data storage," said Terry Erdle, executive vice president, skills certification, CompTIA. "Our work to date with SNIA has been extremely productive. We’ve identified ways that we can leverage each other’s strengths to serve the needs of IT and HR professionals worldwide."

"Jointly developing this new CompTIA Storage+ Powered by SNIA storage networking credential will build upon our success and foundational work in vendor-neutral certifications, education, and training," said Wayne M. Adams, Chairman SNIA Board of Directors. "This credential will be recognized within several vendor-specific certification programs in addition to SNIA and CompTIA programs, providing efficiencies in developing an excellent program for IT professionals to advance their career."

Adams also cites that many organizations are moving to an information-centric IT service model, whereby a flexible and dynamic physical IT infrastructure is the enabling building block. Data storage as part of this infrastructure must be robust and needs to globally support the uniform moving, sharing, and processing of data and information. For IT organizations to fulfill this service model, the requirement for a skilled storage staff able to work internationally with a uniform set of demonstrated capabilities has been documented. The Storage+ credential will be the IT storage professional’s building block to manage the IT infrastructure. More about such trends for an Information Infrastructure can be found in a recently-published body of research summarized in the Gartner report Gartner Analysts Explore Innovation Forces in Information Infrastructure.

Recruitment by CompTIA and SNIA is underway for subject matter experts (SME’s) and other professionals to participate in the development of the new CompTIA Storage+ Powered by SNIA examination and certification which will be submitted to ANSI/ISO for international accreditation.

Communications have been initiated with curriculum and training partners worldwide, through both the CompTIA and SNIA organizations. The initial global availability of the examination in recognized testing centers will include language versions in English, Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese. Additional languages will be considered after the initial launch.

More on the expansion
of data storage requirements
The expansion of data storage requirements at the vast majority of organizations is also cited by a September 2010 CompTIA research survey. Nine out of ten organizations said they expect their need for data storage capacity to increase by at least 10 percent over the next two years. More than one-third will need at least double the capacity they currently have.

The data storage explosion extends to the IT workforce. About half of survey respondents said their organizations have least five people who support or manage their storage technologies. Additionally, almost half expect the number of employees who support and manage storage to increase over the next two years.

The majority of survey participants responded positively to the concept of a vendor-neutral storage certification. Top benefits of such a certification include a better understanding of storage practices, identified by 74 percent of respondents; higher confidence in storage knowledge (73 percent); and high technical expertise (71 percent).

CompTIA Exam Development Site