The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced today the formation of the Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) in order to establish a lexicon of cloud-computing terminology, publish use cases, white papers and technical specifications, and to create reference implementation models for grid-storage architectures.

A storage vendors' industry organization has launched a new program aiming to promote deployments of cloud-based storage and to define industry-wide standards for such storage outsourcing services.

Cloud computing and cloud storage are here to stay. The number of vendors with cloud offerings continues to multiply and I don't envy the end user trying to evaluate vendors and services.