Daniel Sazbon Chairman, SNIA Europe

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Europe announced the appointment of Daniel Sazbon as the new chairman of its board of directors.

He assumes this voluntary role in addition to his existing position as storage infrastructure sales director Europe at IBM and takes over from Bob Plumridge, who will continue to be an active member of the association’s board of directors.

With over 30 years’ experience in the storage industry, Sazbon has been a member of the SNIA Europe board of directors since 2004.

SNIA Europe plays a pivotal role in the storage industry: it provides vendor-neutral expert information and educational materials on a range of technologies and topics related to storage such as flash, tape, persistent memory, software-defined storage, big data, cloud storage and data protection. Through its regional chapters such as SNIA Europe, SNIA, the global organisation, includes a number of technical workgroups and promotes industry standards and best practises, while offering training courses and certification through its committees.

In order to meet the educational needs of the EMEA storage market, SNIA Europe works with both end users and vendors. Sazbon’s knowledge of and experience in a range of storage markets make him a leader of the association. During his career he has managed a number of teams and worked with end users, technology partners and the channel, focussing on areas such as storage optimisation, data protection and networking. This track record gives him an understanding of the issues faced by different parties in the storage industry.

Of his new assignment, he says: “I have been involved with SNIA Europe for more than a decade, and I am excited about taking on such a critical position on the board. I would also like to thank Bob for his immense contribution in recent years to SNIA Europe. The association plays a very important role in educating and advancing the storage industry from a vendor-neutral perspective and I’m proud to be part of an institution that will continue to help the storage industry into the future with the deployment of key object-based models such as Swordfish.”

Bob Plumridge says: “I have served SNIA Europe as chairman for nine years and I’m very pleased to hand the reins to Daniel. I will still hold an active role as part of the board, and I’m confident that the association will continue to flourish under Daniel’s strong leadership.”