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INNOVATIVE PRACTICES TAKE CENTER STAGE AT SNW

Continuing its commitment to recognizing end-user excellence in the storage industry, Storage Networking World (SNW), an educational conference co-owned by Computerworld and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), announced the winners of its "Best Practices in Storage" Awards Program. These winners will receive a memento commemorating their award during a special ceremony held at SNW, which takes place April 5-8 in Phoenix.

Twice a year, the "Best Practices in Storage" Awards Program honors end-user case studies that demonstrate exemplary deployment of storage technology. Awards are conferred in five individual program categories, and this spring's winners included venerable organizations such as American Red Cross, Barclays Bank PLC, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Nationwide Insurance and the Public Broadcasting Service.

"Best Practices in Storage" Awards Program Winners

Today's announcement includes two co-winners and one honorable mention in each of the five award categories:

• "Systems Implementation": Fannie Mae, Washington, D.C.; and Cisco Systems, Research Triangle Park, N.C. (Honorable Mention: Nielsen Media Research, Oldsmar, Fla.).
• "Storage Reliability and Data Recovery": Barclays Bank PLC, Knutsford, United Kingdom; and American Red Cross, NE Georgia Chapter, Gainesville, Ga. (Honorable Mention: Agiliti, St. Paul, Minn.).
• "Innovation and Promise": Make-A-Wish, Phoenix, Ariz.; and Public Broadcasting Service, Alexandria, Va. (Honorable Mention: Ogden City Corp, Ogden, Utah).
• "Industry Regulation Compliance and Corporate Governance": Essex Investment Management Company LLC, Boston, Mass.; and Nationwide Insurance, Columbus, Ohio (Honorable Mention: St. Raphael Healthcare System, New Haven, Conn.).
• "Data Lifecycle Management": North Bronx Healthcare Network, Bronx, N.Y.; and Mustang Engineering, A Wood Group Company, Houston (Honorable Mention: OSF Healthcare System, Peoria, Ill.).

"Storage is playing a vital role as the technology sector slowly but surely rebounds, because of its ability to improve business practices," said Leo Leger, vice president of Strategic Initiatives for Computerworld. "Our 'Best Practices in Storage' Award Program demonstrates how omnipresent storage networking technology has become when Barclays Bank -- a global financial services leader -- shares the spotlight with Make-A-Wish Foundation, one of America's most beloved charities."

Judges of the program were:

• Rick Bauer, CIO, The Hill School.
• Mark Diamond, Chair, SNIA SSIF Customer Advisory Board.
• Bruce Hoard, Executive Editor, SNWOnline.com.
• Ellen J. Lary, CEO, Tutelary LLC and Partner, IN_fusion LLC.
• Jamie Matlin, President, Jobstor.com.
• Norman Owens, Storage Networking Analyst, Carlson Companies.
• Dave Simpson, Editor-in-Chief, InfoStor.
• Bruce Thompson, Consultant, SanTech Consulting.
• Richard Villars, Vice President - Storage Systems, IDC.
• Andy Uhrinek, Senior Architect, Cingular Wireless.

"As with all other aspects of Storage Networking World, this awards program is primarily an exercise in education," continued Leger. "By shining a light on these organizations and their innovative storage deployments, we hope that fellow end-users in attendance at SNW will learn valuable lessons about how to overcome their own storage challenges."

IT end-user companies and organizations responded to an initial "call for nominations," which was originally announced in June 2003 to multiple industry audiences, including all SNIA member companies and Computerworld subscribers responsible for storage solutions. One hundred finalists were evaluated by a panel of enterprise and storage industry experts based on case study submissions that profiled the company, its IT department and storage challenges, as well as application deployment details, summaries of the key technology used and measurable solution outcomes.

IDC To Hold "Breakfast Briefing" On Storage Technology At SNW

Storage Networking World also announced today that respected analyst firm IDC will hold a briefing session at the event entitled, "The Impact of Tiered Storage." This breakfast session will feature IDC's top storage analysts as they examine end-users' growing interest in deploying tiered storage solutions and assess its impact on storage components, systems, networks, management and services. This session builds on the success of a similar briefing at SNW Fall, which generated an audience of more than 500.

Analysts will address the following topics at the breakfast session:

• Form factor and drive technologies.
• Heterogeneous data replication and protection.
• The demand for mixed media arrays.
• Network-based storage services.
• Storage, file and content management.
• Technology migration cycles.
• Storage workloads.

SNW is the foremost educational forum for IT managers and professionals involved in enterprise infrastructure, data management and security, business continuity and emerging storage technologies. Additional program details are available at www.snwusa.com.