CloudSigma and OpenVPN say they can ease SMBs' main worry about public cloud adoption—data security— through a new partnership that will integrate an open source OpenVPN server into CloudSigma's cloud hosting platform.

The partnership, announced July 22, will place an OpenVPN appliance in the CloudSigma cloud, allowing users to connect to private VLANs when accessing public cloud resources to protect against data snooping over the public Internet. The solution, according to the companies, means that businesses "don't have to expose their services over the Internet, and can instead use the VPN service to grant remote workers and branch offices more secure access."

The partners are pitching the pairing of a public cloud with an integrated VPN server as a rare value that larger public cloud hosts won't match. "Not many cloud providers allow customers to have servers residing on their internal network," said Robert Jenkins, CEO of CloudSigma. "But, by allowing direct connections to our VLAN, we are creating a more secure compute environment that is as easily accessible as on-premise infrastructure, but with all the flexibility and scalability of a public cloud."

In addition to securing data in transit, OpenVPN's open source network-encryption platform will also provide IT administrators with granular control over sensitive data by determining on a per-user basis who can access which information.

To be sure, public network traffic and data access—the two issues that the partnership between OpenVPN and CloudSigma addresses—are not the only security challenges that businesses face when they move data and applications to the public cloud. But they are a big part of the picture, and plugging those holes could do much to speed adoption of public clouds.