Storage User Groups Proliferate

If storage end users have felt neglected until now, they are suddenly awash in organizations aiming to meet their needs. Today, Daniel Delshad, the guy behind the Storage World Conference, is launching a new user-oriented association (see End Users Get New Organization).

Aiming to become the first global organization to help storage users navigate an often confusing industry, Delshad's Association of Storage Networking Professionals (ASNP) launched today with the rallying cry, Leave No User Behind.” [Ed. note: Hopefully it will prove less illusory than Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act.]

“End users are very powerless to separate what’s hype and what’s real,” Delshad says. “We want to give end users a voice, as well as more opportunities to connect with other professionals.”

He adds that the new association aims to help users of all sizes and in all categories, saying he hopes to gain members in large banks, telcos, and governmental organizations, but also in small and medium-sized businesses. “Diversity was key for us,” he says.

To fulfill this mission, Deshald claims ASNP has already established 22 regional chapters -- 14 in the U.S. and eight abroad -- where local user meetings and training programs will be organized. The association, which according to Delshad has received enough private investment to last it three years, has also created a Website where users can access "vendor-neutral content" and exchange ideas over message boards. The Website will offer a job section and a request for proposal (RFP) database aimed specifically at the storage industry.ASNP says its regional directors include storage decision makers from companies including Allstate Insurance Co., America Online, and Home Depot, who will help lead local initiatives.

As ambitious as this may sound for a fledgling organization, the real question is whether the storage industry actually needs another user advocacy group. Leaving aside the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)'s various end user groups, including its Customer Executive Council, you can hardly swing a beaver these days without hitting a storage user group.

For instance, also today, the Information Storage Industry Center (ISIC) -- not to be confused with the Information Storage Industry Consortium (INSIC) -- announced that SNIA has signed on as the founding sponsor of its StorageNetworking.org initiative (see SNIA Sponsors End User Group). This organization also aims to support the creation of local and regional storage networking user groups (cloyingly called "SNUGs").

Ron Durbin, director of industry relations at ISIC, says he doesn’t see any problem having several organizations out there with such similar goals. “If they’re really out there to support the needs of end users, then there will be two organizations out there benefiting end users,” he says. “They don’t necessarily have to be competitive.”

Sheila Childs, chairwoman of SNIA, agrees. “Basically there’s an opportunity for cooperation everywhere you turn,” she says. “There doesn’t have to be the only place for end users to turn to. If there’s a clear value proposition so the end users aren’t confused, then we’re all for it.”But while SNIA has thrown its weight behind the StorageNetworking.org initiative, Childs says the industry organization is not ready to take a stand on Delshad's ASNP.

The latter group is also coming out a mere five months after another industry veteran, Jon William Toigo, launched his own end user organization, the Data Management Institute (see Toigo Takes on SNIA).

Despite all the other efforts out their competing to ease user pain, Delshad claims to have taken a unique approach. “SNIA is backed by the industry… and Jon [Toigo] is more of a virtual organization with no user groups,” he says. “We have an association that covers the entire community.”

Several of the ASNP's regional directors agree that the organization is different. “I really like the global aspect of it,” says Michael Thorson, the section head of enterprise systems and services at the Mayo Clinic, and now regional director of ASNP’s Minnesota chapter. “That’s fairly exciting. Things could take off faster or slower in other parts of the world. It’ll be interesting to watch what other people are doing with the storage.”

Thorson, who is also the president of his own storage end-user group [sigh], the Minnesota Open SAN Group, says that the problem with his and many other user-oriented organizations is their limited scope, and the amount of administrative work they burden their members with. “A lot of people that came to our meeting said they were interested in something bigger,” he says. “It’s also nice to have the organization put in the work, have people writing content for the Website. I don’t have to look to see which one of our members can sponsor a room for a meeting.”Compared with Toigo’s organization, at least, the ASNP is reasonably cheap. While the membership fee for the Data Management Institute is a cool $1,000 a year, Delshad will charge only $199 annually -- and, he says, the first 1,000 members will be able to join for free. [Ed. note: Plus, free Fibre Channel reference charts for the kids!]

Still, some industry players think that even this nominal fee is too much. “I don’t understand an end-user association that’s not non-profit,” says a member of another storage user organization, who has asked to remain anonymous.

But Dan Pollack, principal system administrator at AOL, and now ASNP’s regional director of the mid-Atlantic, says the price is not a big deal. “Plenty of organizations have dues in this cost bracket,” he says. “That shouldn’t be a particularly big hurdle.”

The ASNP is beginning to recruit members today, and Delshad says he hopes the association will have 1,000 members by the end of the year, and at least 2,000 by the end of 2004. “And we’re being very conservative on our numbers,” he says.

— Eugénie "Snugs" Larson, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch