Panzura Gets FIPS 140-2 Certification For Cloud Storage

Panzura is the first cloud-integrated storage platform to receive FIPS 140-2 certification, giving partners a platform for providing cloud storage services to federal agencies and contractors who are increasingly looking to move operations to the cloud, said Ranajit Nevatia, vice president of marketing for the Campbell, Calif.-based vendor.

FIPS 140-2 is a government standard for encrypting data used by government and regulated industries for sensitive but unclassified data.

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FIPS 140-2 certification will allow government agencies to take advantage of public cloud storage services such as Amazon Web Services, Google, the Hewlett-Packard Cloud, Nirvanix and clouds based on EMC's Atmos cloud storage systems, Nevatia said.

"There are objections to public cloud services related to enterprise integration of object storage, security, cloud and network availability, and performance," he said. "These four objections are barriers to deploying large-scale object storage systems to the cloud."

Panzura lets partners bring the cost benefits of cloud-based object storage to both government and commercial customers, Nevatia said.

"Panzura makes object storage as simple as storing files," he said. "The Panzura device can sit in all a customer's offices to offer local access to the objects. Locally, they look like files. Think of us as a big file-sharing environments for large businesses."

The Panzura cloud storage controllers come in 1U appliances with up to four hard drives, in 2U appliances up to 24 hard drives, and in virtual appliance versions for VMware-virtualized environments, Nevatia said.

The company does business through a series of partnerships, including government and commercial solution providers; through the channel partners of such storage vendors as Hewlett-Packard, Dell, EMC, IBM and Nirvanix; and via joint selling programs with such cloud providers as Amazon and Google.

PUBLISHED MARCH 12, 2013