At this week's VMware (NYSE: VMW) Partner Exchange 2013, Atlantis Computing, a data center storage optimization provider and VMware Technology Alliance Partner, disclosed that in 2012 it tripled its customer base to some 200 customers and increased its licenses by 67 percent to 250,000.

The company’s mission is to reduce storage consumed, optimize shared storage, boost performance and lower operations risks in data center settings. Its Atlantis ILIO, which is hypervisor- and storage-agnostic, optimizes how storage-intensive applications use data center storage when virtualized. Atlantis ILIO soon will be available for cloud-scale deployments of server applications such as databases, mail servers, collaboration and Big Data, according to company officials.

The 128 new customers Atlantis added in 2012 included heavyweights such as AIG, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, Jackson National Life and the U.S. Army. New customers also included financial services organizations, schools and universities, large retailers, manufacturing and construction companies, government agencies, law firms, service providers, high-tech companies, healthcare providers and hospitals and insurance companies.

Some 80 percent of Atlantis’ business in 2012 was transacted through its 130 channel partners worldwide, a roster that more than doubled in size last year, according to the company. One big partner win was World Wide Technology's awarding of the U.S. Army Desktop Virtualization Project with Atlantis ILIO for 11,000 users spanning seven military hospitals in the United States and Europe.

Additionally, Atlantis signed a worldwide reseller agreement with Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and the company gained certification as VCE Vblock Ready.