SANTA CLARA, CA., April 4, 2011 -- The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) today announced that the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), released as an official SNIA Architecture one year ago, continues to make significant steps toward broad acceptance.

"A critical part of delivering an industry wide standard is building a strong ecosystem of partners, alliances and supporting programs," said David Slik, Co-Chair of SNIA Cloud Storage Technical Work Group. "As demonstrated by initiating relationships with nationally and internationally recognized standards bodies and our forthcoming CDMI Plugfest, we are making strong progress around delivering not only a strong standard, but a widely accepted and valued one."

SNIA's CDMI standard has been refined over the past year and is now being readied for further de jure standardization. The SNIA has joined the DAPS38 Technical Committee (which is responsible for Cloud Computing, among other technology standards) of INCITS -- the primary U.S. focus of standardization in the field of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). The SNIA has also requested a Category A Liaison relationship with the ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC38 subcommittee for Distributed Application Platforms and Services (DAPS).

CDMI has been citied in numerous cloud roadmaps and studies, including those from ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union), TeleManagement Forum, SIENA (the European Standards and Interoperability for eInfrastructure Implementation Initiative), and NIST (the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology). The maturing CDMI Reference Implementation has been through initial testing of the NIST SAJACC (Standards Acceleration to Jumpstart Adoption of Cloud Computing) use cases.

SNIA CSI 2011 sponsored activities include Plugfests, with the first taking place April 19-21, 2011 at the SNIA Technology Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Cloud Plugfest allows vendors to bring their implementations of CDMI and the Open Grid Forum's Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) to test, identify, and fix bugs in a collaborative setting with the goal of providing a forum in which companies can develop interoperable products. For additional details on participating in the Cloud Plugfest, please visit www.snia.org/cloud/cloudplugfest/.

SNIA CSI will repeat its "SNIA Cloud Burst Summit" in Santa Clara, California, on September 22, 2011 as an extended program with the SNIA Storage Developer Conference (SDC). In 2010, over 100 attendees participated in the Cloud Burst Summit, joining other cloud strategists and deployment professionals in this highly successful inaugural program that featured noted industry luminary Geoffrey Moore as the keynote speaker on the topic of clouds and IT transformation.

SNIA CSI has also partnered with Storage Strategies NOW to help bring to market research that will help inform the industry of the key insights around cloud storage. This information, which can be found in the IT Professionals Cloud Adoption Survey released today, will provide a valuable service to help users, vendors and the industry at-large track how adoption and use of cloud technologies should be considered. To learn more, visit www.ssg-now.com.

Deni Connor, principal analyst, Storage Strategies NOW, added, "Our findings include that Email (66%) is the primary application for cloud storage, followed by backup (59%) and front office applications (45%). Additionally, 53% say that SNIA's CDMI will be part of cloud storage RFPs/proposals; and 30% of respondents say SNIA's CDMI is very important for public/hybrid cloud standard."

To learn more about SNIA and CSI stop by the SNIA CSI Cloud Pavilion on Tuesday and Wednesday during SNW Expo Hall hours.

About the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative

The SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) fosters the growth and success of the market for cloud storage for vendors, service providers, and users. Members of the CSI work together to advance the adoption of the SNIA Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) standard, educate the IT communities about cloud storage, perform market outreach that highlights the virtues of cloud storage, and collaborate with other industry associations on cloud storage technical work. CSI member companies represent a variety of segments in the IT industry and include Actifio, Asigra, Broadcom, CA Technologies, Cisco, Cleversafe, CoreVault, Desktone, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, Iron Mountain, LSI Corporation, Mezeo, NetApp, Novell, Oracle, Scality, Sepaton, SpectraLogic, StorSimple, SwiftTest, Terasky, Terremark, and Xiotech. For more information on SNIA's Cloud Storage activities, visit snia.org/cloud and get involved in the conversation at twitter.com/SNIACloud or http://groups.google.com/group/snia-cloud.

About the SNIA

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not-for-profit global organization, made up of some 400 member companies spanning virtually the entire storage industry. SNIA's mission is to lead the storage industry worldwide in developing and promoting standards, technologies, and educational services to empower organizations in the management of information. To this end, the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education, and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market. For additional information, visit the SNIA web site at www.snia.org.

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Source: SNIA