The cloud was made for storage. At its core, the cloud offers a nearly infinite space to store data, whether it’s for backup, business continuity, disaster recovery or any of the other myriad reasons. And for solution providers, offering Storage-as-a-Service, or offering the ability to back up or store data via the Internet, is creating a host of new opportunities. The ability to expand or scale back storage capacity on a whim is a powerful proposition, and solution providers and enterprises want to ensure they’re trusting their data to the right cloud storage vendor.

Here we take a look at 20 companies that do cloud storage, and do it well. Also, keep an eye out for the top 20 cloud infrastructure, software and apps, platform and security vendors.

With its marquee product, the 3X Backup system, 3X delivers online backup service in a cheap, portable and all-in-one device end customers can buy through the channel, giving the user an added local resource to tackle data continuity and backup.

It set the stage with its cloud infrastructure, and Amazon Web Services continued its dominance with Simple Storage Service (S3), its cloud storage service that offers users massive amounts of cloud storage for short money in Amazon’s cloud.

Public or private cloud? Asigra’s got you covered. The company offers a Public Cloud Backup Service or Private Cloud Backup Solution to cover the backup bases in both types of environments, and it requires no agent to back up data on your servers.

Axcient pulls double duty. The company offers data protection and business continuity for MSPs with a hybrid on-premise appliance for backup and combines that with its cloud-based disaster recovery service. What’s more, it’s pay-as-you-grow and features no infrastructure, license or software costs.

Carbonite started in the cloud when one founder’s daughter’s hard drive crashed and the other’s wife’s laptop was stolen. Now, Carbonite offers unlimited cloud backup at flat rates and has backed up more than 80 billion and restored more than 7.2 billion files.

Caringo’s flagship CAStor software is a unified object storage operating system that runs on standard x86 hardware and is a massively scalable foundation for cloud storage applications, secondary storage that complements SAN and NAS, or for simple and affordable data archiving.

Cleversafe fires on all cloud storage cylinders to address storage requirements with tight security, protection and scalability. Public, private and hybrid clouds all get their due whether it’s for archive storage, accessible backup, content distribution or a host of other use cases.

Targeting the SMB and the branch office with its Cloud Attached Storage play, a hybrid solution that marries cloud storage services with on-premise appliances, resellers have the tools to offer cloud storage, hybrid local and off-site data protection and collaboration as a managed service.

Doyenz gives IT providers a suite of cloud-based disaster recovery services to ensure reliable backups and seamless virtual failover. With its Shadowcloud, an active image of the production server is kept in the cloud for use at all times, giving clients immediate continuity.

eFolder offers high-assurance data protection services for remote and local backup and e-mail archiving through its massive stable of VARs and MSPs. Its backup technology uses a reverse-delta technology.

Seagate-owned i365 stores to the cloud with its portfolio of EVault cloud-connected backup and recovery products and services. With EVault SaaS, EVault SaaS Remote Disaster Recovery and EVault SaaS Managed Services, i365 has various flavors of cloud storage for any appetite.

Intronis has been in the cloud since 2003 with its backup and disaster recovery services for MSPs. The company uses 256-bit AES security and multiple data centers on opposite coasts to protect data and ensure availability.

Mezeo’s cloud storage platform offers a service-enabled platform that is easy to deploy, is multitenant, highly scalable and secure. The Mezeo Cloud Storage API and Interoperability API help service providers monetize Storage-as-a-Service with their own branded offerings.

Nasuni prides itself as the gateway to cloud storage and a vendor that makes cloud storage a reality for businesses. With its Nasuni Filer, a virtual NAS file server, Nasuni leverages cloud resources to ease file storage and protection in the midmarket.

Security, reliability and redundancy take center stage for Nirvanix. With its CloudComplete portfolio, Nirvanix gives its users a host of cloud storage deployment options that includes the CloudNAS Gateway, the public cloud Storage Delivery Network, and hNode hybrid and private cloud solutions.

Scality is sick of storage system sprawl management, failures, limitations and manual intensive data migration; and with its Scality RING software the company looks to transform commodity x86 server hardware and Ethernet LANs into cloud storage, all while chopping costs.

StorSimple has made waves as an application-optimized cloud storage player for Microsoft Server applications. The company is bent on bringing the benefits of the cloud to on-premise applications without forcing customers to migrate those applications to the cloud.

Symform’s Storage Cloud combines the best practices of disaster recovery, data security and distributed networking leveraging the Web. And Symform promises to do it 10 times cheaper and 10 times faster than its rival online storage services.

Vembu attacks the cloud storage market with a suite of online, hybrid and cloud-based storage products and services: Vembu Pro online backup service; Vembu Home cloud storage service; StorGrid SP Edition online backup software; and StorGrid Pro Edition hybrid backup software.

Zetta takes the features and functions of an enterprise- class NAS system and puts an on-demand cloud twist on it. The company offers cloud storage solutions it says eliminate data protection and backup costs, complexity and risk; deliver instant, scalable capacity; and are future-proof.