SNIA Names Asigra Executive Ashar Baig as Chairman of New Cloud Backup & Recovery Special Interest Group

Asigra Inc., a leading Cloud Backup(TM) and recovery software provider since 1986, today announced that company executive Ashar Baig has been named by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) as Chairman of the new Cloud Backup and Recovery (Cloud BUR) Special Interest Group (SIG).

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 providing elastic, ondemand storage billed only for what is used. Baig will lead the group's efforts in educating the market about Cloud BUR benefits through use cases and in defining requirements for standards that are part of SNIA's Cloud Storage Initiative. The new group will create best practices and conduct surveys to enlighten the industry through collaboration with end users, the channel, analysts and Cloud BUR vendors.

"I look forward to representing Asigra in taking on this new challenge and leading SNIA's efforts in expanding the awareness and establishing best practices for implementing Cloud Backup," said Baig. "Recognition of the Cloud Backup industry by SNIA and the active participation of other industry leaders in this project gives new momentum in establishing backup to the cloud as a more effective, affordable and flexible model of protecting critical data with improved IT efficiency."

"It's natural that SNIA would appoint Ashar Baig to head this new group, given the leadership that Asigra has demonstrated in developing the Cloud Backup market," said Val Bercovici, Chairman of the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative. "The Cloud Backup and Recovery group is a key extension to the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative and is expected to greatly accelerate the awareness and deployment of this critical cloud storage application."

The Cloud BUR SIG will fulfil its mission by:

- Defining and promoting standards around Cloud BUR
- Promoting the value of Cloud BUR to the industry and adopters
- Promoting industry's implementation of Cloud BUR standards through the sharing of real use cases
- Conducting and promoting interoperability demonstrations and plugfests
- Leveraging SNIA and CSI committees and events to educate endusers
- Advocating customer needs and reflecting user concerns and issues back into the Cloud BUR SIG members
- Promoting Cloud BUR as an application extension of the CSI and the CDMI standard

SNIA's Cloud Backup and Recovery SIG will consist of standing committees on marketing, education, enduser liaison, channel relations, international relations and more. In addition to its educational mission, the group is charged with defining the requirements for standards around Cloud BUR and promoting Cloud BUR as an application extension of the CSI and the SNIA Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) standard. Along with Asigra, founding members of the SNIA Cloud Backup and Recovery SIG include EMC, NetApp, i365, Iron Mountain, CoreVault, TeraSky, EVS, Terremark Worldwide, HMK and Recovery Networks.

For more information on SNIA's Cloud Storage activities, please visit www.snia.org/cloud or get involved in the conversation at www.twitter.com/SNIACloud or http://groups.google.com/group/cloudstorage.

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Resources

- Why Cloud Backup/Recovery WILL be Your Data Protection [http://asigra.com/pdf/cloudbackup.pdf]
- Agentless Backup is Not a Myth [http://asigra.com/pdf/architecture.pdf]
- Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) Field Audit Report: Asigra [http://asigra.com/pdf/esgfieldaudit.pdf]