By samdizzy

I recently asked Talkin’ Cloud’s readers how long the cloud storage market would involve on-premise hardware appliances. The latest answer to that question comes from venture capitalists — which are pumping more money into CTERA Networks, developer of hybrid cloud storage and data protection services.

No doubt, CTERA focuses on a hyper-competitive market. Talkin’ Cloud hears from dozens of storage companies each week, many of which offer hybrid approaches that link on-premise appliances to cloud services. But the CTERA story, which has caught our attention multiple times, also involves some key milestones.

For instance, the company recently completed another round of funding, though a dollar amount was not disclosed. And in 2011, CTERA had double-digit revenue growth and reached 100,000 business end-users, the company claimed.

According to a prepared statement:

CTERA Networks Partner Program

The CTERA partner program specifically targets ISPs, MSPs, distributors and resellers in the SMB, SOHO and enterprise branch office markets.

True believers include Swisscom, which is launching a cloud data protection and file collaboration service built atop CTERA’s technology. Swisscom IT Services already supports 400 customers across multiple countries — providing a potential cross-sell and up-sell opportunity for the cloud storage service.

CTERA’s business sounds promising. But there are roughly 1,600 cloud storage and backup companies in the market, many of which promote channel programs to partners. We’ll be watching to see if CTERA can stand out from that crowd.

Side Note: After this article was published, CTERA noted that the company is a vendor to CSPs and customers — and not a CSP itself. CTERA made a compelling case that “there are only a handful of technology vendors offering cloud storage/backup,” and the 1,600 figure — mentioned in the paragraph above — focuses on the CSP market and not the vendor market.