Cloud provider Virtustream has launched a cloud-based object storage service that aims to augument storage hardware from EMC.

The company is the latest addition to the EMC Federation, having been acquired in 2015.

Virtustream Storage Cloud can be used to extend the primary on-premise storage pool or create a new storage tier, as well as for backup purposes.

“Any modern data center must extend seamlessly to the cloud, which is why we’re making cloud connectivity and cloud tiering an inherent capability of all of our products,” said Jeremy Burton, president of Products and Marketing at EMC.

“With Virtustream Storage Cloud, and the cloud capabilities in our storage products, we’re able to offer our customers even more choice: they can tier to an EMC managed public cloud, EMC private cloud or third-party public cloud of their choice.”

Storage cloud
– EMC

EMC’s hybrid play

Virtustream was established in 2009 and acquired in 2015, just as it was planning to go public. Now, the company has become a new operating group within EMC, and will persist as part of Dell Technologies once the deal between the two closes sometime in Autumn.

Virtustream offers cloud services with a twist: its technology platform breaks down virtual machines into smaller compute, storage and memory components, so customers only provision and pay for what they use, without any wasted overhead.

Virtustream measures its VMs every five minutes to make sure that IT resources fit the workload. This approach helps run more workloads per physical system, and enables quality assurance based around IOPS.

The company already offers an all-purpose Enterprise Cloud service, along with a Federal Cloud aimed at the US government agencies. In individual cases, it also licenses its software to third parties.

EMC describesthe new Virtustream Storage Cloud as a hyperscale platform built for the world’s largest enterprises, service providers, and public sector organizations. It is especially suitable for large object sizes.

EMC products that support the Storage Cloud include Data Domain, Data Protection Suite, VMAX, XtremIO, Isilon and the recently launched Unity systems.

Virtustream currently offers its services out of eight locations across the US and EMEA region. According to CEO Rodney Rogers, the company is planning to enter the Asia Pacific market in the second halfof 2016, likely starting with Japan and then Australia.