Details of the service are still under wraps, but the company – Nasuni – will unveil its Nasuni Filer service later on today. The company – which has 18 staff at its headquarters in Massachusetts – reportedly plans to target mid-sized enterprises, an area of the cloud market that has largely been ignored by the high-end cloud players such as IBM, and the self-service entry-level players that generally act as a gateway for Amazon's cloud facilities.

According to today's edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, the gameplan is to link VMware-based environments to cloud service providers such as Amazon and Iron Mountain, delivering the service as a file server for client's VMware systems.

Rather than simply linking the VMware environment with cloud storage service, Nasuni is adding value in the form of encrypted data links, caching and deduplication of files.

Other features include automatic provisioning and synchronous snapshots, a facility which will be useful for audit logging. Infosecurity notes.

The Chronicle quotes Laura DuBois, program director with research firm IDC's storage software practice, as saying that the technology involve is "quite clever."

"It does address security concerns in the form of encryption of data in flight and at rest, and it also certainly addresses the concerns around availability", she told the paper.

Interestingly, Nasuni will reportedly initially offer its service on a free beta testing basis, with fees from $250 a month – invoiced on a one-bill basis – starting when the facility enters commercial option later this year.