The Storage Networking Industry Association announced the formation of its Cloud Backup and Restore Special Interest Group (Cloud BUR SIG) to further the Cloud BUR industry by educating the marketplace and driving demand for Cloud BUR solutions and services.

The Cloud BUR SIG is a project of SNIA's Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) that promotes the adoption of cloud storage as a new delivery model that provides elastic, on-demand storage billed only for what is used. The role of the group is to educate the market about Cloud BUR benefits through use cases and to define requirements for standards that are part of SNIA's Cloud Storage Initiative. The new group will create best practices and conduct surveys to educate the industry through collaboration with end users, the channel, analysts and cloud BUR vendors. This SIG will use cloud industry venues such as the SNIA Symposium, SNIA Storage Developers Conference (SDC), CSI CloudBurst, SNW USA, SNW Europe and other cloud-related industry events as well as online mediums to conduct webinars, seminars and podcasts to further industry awareness about Cloud BUR.

SNIA's Cloud BUR SIG will consist of standing committees on marketing, education, end-user liaison, channel relations, international relations and more.

The group will fulfill its mission by defining the requirements for standards around Cloud BUR:

• promoting the value of Cloud BUR to the industry and its customers;
• promoting industry implementation of Cloud BUR standards through the sharing of use cases;
• conducting interoperability demonstrations and plugfests;
• leveraging SNIA and CSI committees and events to educate end-users;
• advocating customer needs and reflecting user challenges back to Cloud BUR SIG members and
• promoting Cloud BUR as an application extension of the CSI and the SNIA Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) standard.

Founding members of the Cloud BUR SIG include cloud backup and recovery platform vendor, Asigra, who will chair the group as well as prominent cloud backup platform and service providers from around the world, including NetApp, i365, CoreVault, TeraSky, EVS, Terremark Worldwide, HMK and Recovery Networks.
 
"The adoption of cloud backup and recovery is escalating as organisations benefit from the simplicity, cost and other business advantages of this emerging technology platform. SNIA's recognition is timely as more organisations seek guidance and standards in the deployment of new Cloud BUR solutions," said Val Bercovici, Chairman of SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative and Cloud Czar at NetApp's Office of the CTO. "The Cloud BUR Special Interest Group will provide a platform for growth by defining the requirements for standards and delivering a pipeline of resources to industry participants that include vendors, service providers and end-users."