Back in March we wrote a piece called "Pure Cloud Storage" that discussed how the Nirvanix strategy was different than most other cloud providers and why we thought they were well positioned to capture the enterprise. Later we wrote how Healthcare seemed to be one of the ideal beachheads for enterprise cloud storage. It is interesting that this week Nirvanix made two major announcements that substantiate both of those claims.

Nirvanix and IBM

IBM is one of the gatekeepers to enterprise data centers. Being introduced by them into these top IT infrastructures can be a boon to a technology provider. In my experience IBM takes this responsibility seriously and is careful whom they partner with. After all if something goes wrong it is as much a problem for IBM as it is for the introduced vendor.

IBM has had a strong cloud practice for years, one could say they were providing cloud solutions before we knew we were supposed to call them cloud. One gap in their portfolio was a strong cloud storage solution that could provide massively scalable object storage capabilities with a global namespace. IBM needed to find a partner that could provide these production grade enterprise capabilities. Nirvanix was the obvious choice, and gives IBM the flexibility to expand from public cloud storage to hybrid and private deployments as well

It is interesting to note that IBM chose to OEM the Nirvanix solution, not simply resell it. An OEM agreement is a much stronger level of commitment between the two companies and is a testament to IBM's confidence in the Nirvanix solution to help meet their large customer demands.

IBM is going to focus the Nirvanix solution on the unstructured storage of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, health records, images, audio and video files, email and text messages as well as storing objects. IBM will focus the solution on Media and Entertainment, Healthcare, and Financial services, with primary uses cases being content collaboration and backup and archival.

Nirvanix and Healthcare

As we stated above, we think Healthcare is the ideal early beachhead for enterprise grade cloud storage. Nirvanix helped that cause when it announced that Cerner, a nearly $2 billion dollar Healthcare solutions provider, will deploy a Nirvanix private cloud as part of their Cerner Skybox Solutions. The Cerner Skybox Storage service enables Cerner's clients to consolidate PACs, radiology, lab, clinical systems and patient records in a secure enterprise-grade cloud storage environment.

Healthcare has all the makings of the cloud storage poster child. It has a rapidly increasing number of files being created in the form of images and other patient records, those files are increasing in individual size and they need to be accessed from nearly everywhere at any time of day. Finally all of this data must be kept for a disproportionate period of time compared with traditional corporate IT driven because of ‘life of patient’ regulations.

Healthcare IT can leverage cloud storage in both its private and secured public forms. In terms of Cerner specifically, the company’s private cloud storage node is located inside its data centers and fully managed as a service by Nirvanix. The private node enables Cerner to comply with the most rigorous corporate and legal data retention requirements by storing data within their own facility. The fact that Nirvanix can deploy cloud storage across private, hybrid and public nodes all with a metered billing model will prove attractive to Healthcare providers. Consumption economics is definitely the direction that storage purchases are headed.

Nirvanix and Execution

Nirvanix has been posting triple digit consecutive quarterly growth lately and these two new wins will enable them to continue on their rapid growth trajectory.

Nirvanix has taken another key step in further elevating itself and enterprise cloud storage by gaining acceptance from the world’s largest IT services provider ($37B in revenues in 2010) and also establishing a public reference in Cerner in a market that is tailor made for cloud storage; Healthcare. These two significant wins should give users increased confidence as they consider cloud storage, in either form.

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previous blog: Completing Cloud Storage                          Nirvanix is a client of Storage Switzerland