Terry Yoshii

Company Represented While Actively Involved with the SNIA:

Intel Corporation, IT Enterprise Architect

Current Company:

Intel Corporation, IT Enterprise Architect

Years with the SNIA:

6 Years

Committees, Forums, Initiatives, Board Seats Held at the SNIA:

• SNIA End User Council 2005 - Present
• Hands-on Lab Program Manager
• EUC Survey Committee
• Various projects with SMI, DMF, SSSI

Fondest Memories of the SNIA:

It was October, 2004 at the Fall SNW in Orlando, Florida. After the Interoperability Lab was complete and torn down on Wednesday at 5pm, some of the equipment from the Interoperability Lab was moved to a single classroom for our first attempt at delivering a Hands-on Lab session at 8am on Thursday morning. At 3am Thursday morning, Tom Mancuso and I were still working with some of the vendors who were trying to get the equipment operational for the IP Storage HoL exercises. At this point, we were in desperate need of sleep but we didn't have keys to lock up the classroom and we certainly didn't want to risk leaving the room unsecured. So, our solution was to order a cot and have it rolled into the classroom! As it turned out, we didn't need to use the cot. Well, 7:30am Thursday morning found us bleary eyed and not so bushy tailed. Miraculously, we pulled it off and delivered our very first Hands-on Lab session to 16 students. Most everyone thought that it couldn't be done and … they were almost right! : I'll probably always remember this event as my "initiation" into the SNIA.

Proudest Moments while Active with the SNIA:

Following up on my fondest memories … it was SNW Fall 2007 and after filling over 2,200 seats in Hands-on Lab classes at SNWs spanning these three years, I "retired" from my role as the HoL program manager. Over time, the HoL had developed into a key program that attracted a great number of end users to SNW events. All of this was only possible through the strong support of end users, sponsoring vendors, SNIA staff, SNW Staff, and the SNIA Board of Directors. We all worked hard to deliver a quality educational program to end users at SNW conferences. I was/am very proud to have had the opportunity to serve and create a program that has great value to so many end users and helps achieve the mission of the SNIA.

I am also proud of the EUC's development and launch of the StorTOC community web site. End user engagement has always been a challenge for the SNIA. I don't think that we fully understand how to best do this yet but I do feel that StorTOC may be the right vehicle to help us build a stronger community of end users. All of the members of the EUC Governing Board have made significant personal contributions to bring this project to fruition.

Another moment that comes to mind is the completion of the ILM Maturity Model where a number of end users and DMF members collaborated to produce a comprehensive maturity model that can gauge the maturity level of ILM practices within an end user's company. I'm very proud of the way we stuck with this project to see it through to completion. It was not a glamorous high visibility project but the potential impact it could have to organizations seeking to develop or improve their ILM practices/services is enormous. I'm proud to have led this project and it was a pleasure working with such an outstanding team of professionals.

There are far too many memories of proud moments with my SNIA friends and associates in the SNIA to list them all here. In short, it is about people. It is the camaraderie and sense of community and family that is built over time across the boundaries of nationality, companies, titles, job functions and even language that makes me feel proud to be a member of the SNIA.

SNIA's Greatest Achievements:

As an end user, I don't always see, or pay attention to, all of the SNIA's activities. What I do see is that the SNIA has been very successful in promoting and evolving storage technologies and practices to the benefit of the global storage community. With that said, I feel that the SNIA's greatest achievement is in creating and maintaining an organization that is well respected, visible, and relevant to the storage community. The SNIA, through its initiatives, forums, technical working groups and alliances, has been and continues to be relevant to our business as end users and as vendors. In my opinion, the SNIA's relevance can be attributed to its willingness to expand its scope beyond networked storage infrastructure technologies to tackle some of the more challenging issues around storage management, data management, security, information lifecycle management, and now cloud storage. Harnessing the resources to address these relevant storage technologies and practices is a great achievement by the SNIA and a testament to the quality of the leadership and volunteers within the organization.