2006 Storage Industry ACE Awards

Data Storage Connection's Industry ACE Awards For Storage recognize vendor commitment to helping users and/or integrators make informed decisions about technology adoption and deployment. To be eligible for an Industry ACE designation, storage vendors must demonstrate excellence in all three of the following criteria: Appeal, Content, Education.

Appeal: The vendor offers an innovative, feature-rich product line. The vendor's "latest and greatest" product offerings consistently break new ground or cross key thresholds in terms of technology advances.

Content: The vendor provides information-rich marketing collateral that goes beyond merely promoting the vendor's own products and services. The vendor places information about its own offerings within the broader context of emerging industry trends and common user needs. This emphasis is clearly demonstrated in materials available on the corporate Web site, including product brochures, white papers, case studies, and best practices guidelines.

Education: The vendor provides outstanding outreach programs and services in one or more of the following areas: end user training, technical support, consulting services, partner programs, road shows, and user conferences.

Nomination Process

This year's awards will be presented June 20, 2006, at Storage World Conference in Long Beach, CA. Nominations are open February 13, 2006 through March 17, 2006. To nominate a vendor company, access the awards nomination form on the Storage World Conference site.

Voting

The 2006 award winners will be determined by a judges panel consisting of industry analysts, the Data Storage Connection editorial staff, and you, the online voting public. During the online voting period, April 3 through May 12, 2006, you'll be able to access a voting form on the Storage World Conference site.

Judges Panel

In addition to the online voting public, the Judges Panel for the 2006 awards includes:

2006 Judges Panel

Tom Coughlin	Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates has been working for more than 25 years in the data storage industry at companies such as Ampex, Polaroid, Seagate, Maxtor, Micropolis, Syquest, and 3M. He has more than 50 publications and six patents to his credit. Tom is active with IDEMA, the IEEE Magnetics Society, IEEE CE Group, and other professional organizations. Tom is Vice-Chairman of the 2006 Santa Clara Valley IEEE Section. He is the founder and organizer of the Annual Storage Visions Conference, a partner to the annual Consumer Electronics Show, and co-organizer of the annual Network Storage Conference. Coughlin Associates provides market and technology analysis as well as Data Storage Technical Consulting services. For more information go to www.tomcoughlin.com
Chris Loringer	Chris Loringer is the storage, security, and networking editor for Business Solutions magazine, a channel publication that helps VARs and integrators grow their businesses. Loringer writes tech trends articles, installation reviews, and channel news and analysis. He brings 18 years of hands-on IT management experience to the magazine, including serving as the president of Erie Computer, a regional technology VAR, serving as the CIO for Corry Publishing, and founding his own professional services company. Prior to joining Business Solutions, Loringer worked as a freelance writer in the storage industry and edited Mass Storage News.
Bill Peldzus	Bill Peldzus is Director of Storage Architecture at GlassHouse Technologies, Inc. where he is responsible for key client engagements. Prior to GlassHouse, Mr. Peldzus had more than 20 years experience working in technical positions at Imation Corporation's Storage Professional Services and StorageTek's SAN Operations business group, as well as running multiple IT groups at CNA Insurance and Northern Trust Company. Bill often serves as content expert in storage networking presentations, including speaking engagements at Storage Decisions, Storage World, Comdex, Storage Management, IDC's StorageVision, Storage Networking World, and Networld+Interop. Peldzus holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science with an emphasis in Management Information Systems (MIS) from the University of St. Francis in Joliet, Ill.
Arun Taneja	Arun Taneja is the Founder, President and Consulting Analyst of the Taneja Group, an analyst and consulting group focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies. From late 2000 to early 2003 he was a Senior Analyst at the Enterprise Storage Group, an analyst group focused on storage technologies. He has 25 years experience in the industry specifically in the areas of Servers, Operating systems, File Systems, Storage Area Networks, Network Attached Storage, FC, iSCSI and InfiniBand, Clustering and Storage Management Software (backup/restore, replication, snapshot, SRM, virtualization, etc.). Arun has held various executive level positions in marketing and engineering with companies like Sun Microsystems, IBM, Data General, Vixel and Andataco. He specializes in identifying technologies that have disruptive market potential and assisting companies with market positioning and strategy. Arun holds a Bachelor's in Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India and an MSEE and MBA from the University of New Hampshire.