What Is Cloud Storage?

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Cloud Storage is a conglomeration of highly-scalable data storage, data access, and data management services created to conduct business or consumer-related commerce. Cloud storage provides near-universal access to data with proper access controls implemented for security and reliability.

Cloud Storage can be provided as private (in your own data center on your equipment) or public (at someone else’s data center on shared equipment) or a combination of the two.

For the IT organization or IT professional, Cloud Storage can be used to streamline access to data both inside and outside the organization. Cloud Storage implementations (such as public and private cloud) can be combined with localized enterprise storage to enhance flexibility and potentially reduce costs of overall data storage.

For the small business or consumer, Cloud Storage is a model that can be used to greatly simplify storage environments. This could include:

Deploying storage to the cloud to reduce costs
Increasing accessibility and ensure availability
Enhancing storage security
Using “as a service” components
Reducing the time to flexibly add storage capacity to any enterprise environment

Cloud Storage activities inside SNIA

The SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) is committed to the adoption, growth, and standardization of storage in cloud infrastructures. This encompasses data services, orchestration, and management, as well as the promotion of portability of data in multi-cloud environments. The SNIA Cloud Storage Technical Work Group drives standards like the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), which is an open ISO/IEC standard that enables cloud solution developers to meet the growing need of interoperability for data stored in the cloud.

Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI)

The SNIA Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) is an ISO/IEC standard that enables cloud solution vendors to meet the growing need of interoperability for data stored in the cloud. The CDMI standard is applicable to all types of clouds – private, public and hybrid. There are currently more than 20 products that meet the CDMI specification.

Learn more about fundamental storage networking topics: