Two major moguls announced the formation of a strategic partnership when it comes to cloud-based storage.

While last week German enterprise software maker SAP teamed with Verizon to offer its customer relationship management (CRM) solutions on the cloud, this week BlackBerry-manufacturer Research in Motion (News - Alert) (RIM) unveiled its plans to partner with Microsoft for cloud storage to provide a new service, a RIM-hosted BlackBerry enterprise service available for Office 365.

The new service, which will be available for Microsoft (News - Alert) Exchange Online for Office 365 on a subscription basis starting at $0 per user per month, will offer features similar to BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express. The service is expected to be available in closed beta in mid-2011.

“We couldn’t be more excited about this direction!” RIM posted in its recent blog. “This latest addition to RIM’s cloud-based services signals a new era of possibilities for enterprise customers. RIM is committed to an open and collaborative partner ecosystem with support for open architecture and tools, multiple platforms and cloud implementations that work for our partners and customers.”

The new service will offer features such as calendar, contacts and video services that will be accessible from BlackBerry (News - Alert) devices. Customers can benefit from lower costs, additional capabilities and integrated services.

“We’re embracing it in a big way, and we’re going out jointly with Microsoft to all of our customers,” said Jim Tobin, senior vice president of RIM’s software and business services unit, in a recent “Cloud Tweaks” article.

According to the report, Tobin said that around a quarter of RIM’s large corporate customers will shift data to the cloud by the end of this year and as many as 50 percent by next year since it’s a “more efficient model for everyone.”

The trend of companies turning to the cloud for storage purposes has become increasingly popular. Recently, Cirtas, a leader in cloud storage services, reminded businesses of the fact that cloud storage has “tremendous potential” for reducing a company’s overall cost by eliminating upfront and ongoing investments in infrastructure, floor space, power, cooling and management, as stated in a recent report.

According to a report put out by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), many enterprises are not seeing the benefits in cloud storage as often as one might think because for the most part “services on the market lack enterprise-class features.”

Cirtas is challenging that fact, however, as it provides a feature set that makes remote cloud storage function like local, SAN-attached storage, with all the enterprise-class features expected in today’s data centers.