Online backup software provider Vembu has unveiled a number of new partnerships with leading cloud storage providers, allowing solution providers incredible flexibility to offer online backup solutions to customers regardless of which cloud storage delivery platform they use.

Vembu’s StorGrid Service Provider Edition of its StorGrid online backup software is tailored specifically for solution providers whose customers want to take advantage of cloud storage offerings for their backup and disaster recovery needs, says Vembu President Lux Narayan.

“Pick a cloud, any cloud, and we can work with it,” says Narayan. “Partnering with every cloud storage provider will give us a foot in the door for any solution provider to sell our software, and they’ll have a better value proposition for any potential customer,” he says.

In April 2009, Vembu announced it would partner with Amazon.com to provide software integration with Amazon’s S3 cloud storage platform. Now, Narayan says, Vembu is expanding its reach by partnering with cloud storage provider Caringo and integrating StorGrid with Caringo’s CAStor backup solution, and partnerships with Nirvanix and ParaScale will be announced within the next few months, he says.

“Solution providers and MSPs shouldn’t be constrained because their vendor has a partnership with only one cloud provider,” Narayan says.

As a software provider, Narayan says, Vembu doesn’t host or manage any data themselves, only providing the software that allows service providers to hook into existing cloud storage capacity. StorGrid can offer integration with existing public clouds, as well as give solution providers the ability to develop private clouds for companies not comfortable with offsite storage.

Narayan says smaller solution providers that want to deliver cloud-based online backup services were often stymied by the infrastructure investments required and/or the risk involved with hosting customers data.

Narayan says many weren’t interested in hosting customers’ data because they’d encountered privacy and security concerns from customers, but also realized that by not having a solution like Vembu’s, they were leaving many opportunities untapped.

The partnership with Amazon.com allows Vembu to reach into the lucrative SMB market, while partnerships with ParaScale and Caringo will focus on solution providers selling into midmarket and large enterprise customers, he says.

StorGrid Service Provider Edition is vendor-agnostic, and can seamlessly integrate with any backend storage solution providers and their customers currently use, Narayan says.

The StorGrid solution is incredibly flexible, Narayan says, allowing service providers to connect data via NAS, a SAN or direct-attached storage. Solution providers can also back up locally to any on-premise storage they may have, and then replicate customers’ data to the cloud for archiving and disaster recovery.

StorGrid Service Provider edition also offers browser-based administrative capabilities both on the server and the client side, which means service providers can access their deployments from any computer, anywhere in the world, as long as an administrator has a login and password.

Narayan says the solution is compatible with Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Free BSD operating systems, and the software will be available via a subscription licensing model.

Solution providers can layer the software on their own infrastructure, and then add their own pricing to drive revenue.

“Solution providers can set their own margins based on which services they’ll offer,” Narayan says. “It’s not uncommon for our service providers to have various pricing models.