At the Storage Networking World Spring 2011, Nirvanix is set to team with Symantec for a hands-on lab demonstration of Symantec’s (News - Alert) NetBackup and its integration with the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network.

Nirvanix (News - Alert) is a provider of enterprise-class cloud storage services. The company claims that its Storage Delivery Network (SDN) is a fully managed cloud storage service that stores, delivers and processes storage requests and offers the optimal user experience. The SDN is comprised of standards-based access to integrated services, all powered by Nirvanix's patent-pending proprietary technology and infrastructure.

Symantec is a global provider of security, storage and systems management solutions. Symantec’s latest version NetBackup 7 is designed to offer data protection for next generation data centers. The NetBackup 7 Platform provides the ability to protect completely, store efficiently, recover anywhere, find easily and manage centrally.

As stated, Symantec NetBackup Cloud Storage for Nirvanix makes using the cloud for backup and recovery as easy as managing on-premise storage, while lowering costs. According to both the companies, the integration of their technologies makes it very easy to get the benefits of the cloud while maintaining corporate security and data integrity.

TMC (News - Alert) recently reported that Apptix (News - Alert) will be using the e-mail protection and Web security service offered by Symantec Hosted Services. Symantec Hosted Services, e-mail protection service will be available for all the 300,000 global hosted exchange users of Apptix.

Commenting on the deal, Richard Collins, vice president for Americas, Symantec Hosted Services, said, “We’re pleased to have Apptix, a leading provider of hosted communications services, select our solution for their customer security.”

Symantec recently announced a few enhancements to NetBackup 7 that simplify data protection in virtual environments. The latest release introduces Virtual Machine Intelligent Policy technology for VMware environments to automate the discovery and protection of virtual machines while enforcing existing data protection policies. Unlike other data protection solutions, this technology is said to accelerate the transition to a virtual environment for enterprise organizations deploying a large number of virtual machines or building a private cloud infrastructure.

In other cloud storage news, Cirtas  has been at the forefront of trying to entice companies to make the switch to store their data centers in the cloud.

The 2010 Red Herring Top 100 North America Company, aimed at making cloud storage work like on–site storage arrays, recently published an article on its website that discusses the concern surrounding cloud storage and the way that Cirtas’ solutions address those issues.  

Cloud storage can be a preferable option because there is no infrastructure to manage, it leads to effective cost savings, there is a limitless amount of capacity, you only pay for what you use and geographically redundant copies of your data are automatically created.