A*STAR’s Data Storage Institute & Fujitsu Asia to Establish First SAN Academy in Singapore

With the explosion of digital information in the last few years, organizations globally are facing a real challenge of managing storage systems that will have to keep up with the endless stream of data and information being generated and received.

Hence, Singapore’s first dedicated R&D centre to advance high performance Storage Area Network (SAN) technologies, SAN Academy, was open today under a strategic partnership between A*STAR’s Data Storage Institute (DSI) and Fujitsu Asia.

The academy, located at Technopreneur Centre, marks the first step by both parties to jointly research and develop high performance Storage Area Network (SAN) technologies.

In line with DSI’s vision to establish Singapore as a regional training hub for network storage technologies, the SAN Academy will be open to end-users and interested participants – comprising IT professionals, academics and researchers – for access to a wealth of knowledge in areas of storage networking such as:

modelling, simulation and design
multi-tier security implementation
research and development
In this partnership, Fujitsu Asia will deploy its ETERNUS SAN system at the academy. In return, DSI will provide its heterogeneous computing infrastructure and cutting-edge equipment at the Network Storage Technology research laboratory located within the academy.

The SAN Academy will undertake activities centred on the ETERNUS range of SAN systems. Examples of such activities include:

joint studies on next-generation storage networking technologies
training and certification programmes
workshops and seminars
product demonstrations
proof-of-concept testing
interoperability, benchmarking and other test services
“Fujitsu Asia has many decades of experience in developing state-of-the art network storage systems and other hardware products, and we are proud to be the strategic partner of A*STAR for the SAN Academy,” said Mr Masaki Kajiyama, President of Singapore Operations at Fujitsu Asia. “Visitors to the centre can tap on our expertise to gain valuable insights on developing, implementing and managing high-reliability SAN systems.”

Professor Chong Tow Chong, Executive Director of DSI, said: “We are happy to partner Fujitsu Asia in this collaboration, as DSI continues to move ahead towards being a premier centre of excellence in data storage innovation and storage networking education. This partnership will generate more network storage professionals to meet the growing demand of the storage networking industry in Singapore.”

Mr Lim Swee Nian, Executive Director (Electronics) of Singapore Economic Development Board said: “We are pleased that Fujitsu Asia has chosen Singapore/Data Storage Institute to establish the SAN Academy and undertake joint studies on next-generation storage networking technologies. This is in line with EDB’s strategy of extending our strengths in the enterprise hard disk drive to support the fast growing network storage systems market and will certainly strengthen Singapore’s status as a data storage hub for Asia”.

It is projected that the worldwide disk storage system market will exceed US$30 billion by the year 2010. Singapore, being ranked third on the Networked Readiness Index by the World Economic Forum last year, will certainly in the position to attract and grow the network storage industry through multi-collaboration with world leading companies such as Fujitsu Asia. The SAN Academy will be operational by 7 May 2007.