NEW DELHI, INDIA: Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) India, the apex industry body for the fast growing data storage sector announced a new Board and Vijay Pradhan as its executive director. The board members represent leading players of the data storage industry and include Manoj Chugh as Chairman, Rahul Gupta as VC, Rajesh Janey as Treasurer, Avijit Basu as Secretary, Guna Bala as Director-Education, Venktata Ramanna Thumisi as Director-Technical Working Group (TWG) and Praveen Sahai as Director-Marketing, amongst others.

Speaking about the industry, Chugh said, “With information exploding in every sphere of business and life, the storage industry will continue to gain prominence within the IT infrastructure space. Therefore, our endeavor at SNIA would be to make sure that we are the building blocks in place for this sector, to become a significant contributor to the Indian technology industry.”

The storage industry is expected to record revenues of $372 million as per IDC in 2008 with a potential to reach $700 million in the next three years, according to industry estimates. As the volume of information grows due to trends like social networking, use of multimedia to share information and technologies such as cloud computing and virtualization take hold amongst enterprises, the storage sector is expected to see an uptick in demand.

Speaking about his appointment, Pradhan said, “The storage industry is definitely one of the most exciting areas to work in within the technology industry today. I look at my role at SNIA India as an opportunity to give back to the industry of which I have been a part for 27 years through development of this sector.”