CAMPBELL, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 1, 2015) - Panzura, leading the charge in removing the barrier to the cloud, today announced an agreement with AliCloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA), to accelerate the adoption of secure, affordable cloud computing for businesses around the world. Under the terms of the agreement, the Panzura Virtual Cloud Controller will be available on the AliCloud Marketplace, enabling applications that were developed for use within corporate datacenters to run on AliCloud. In addition, Panzura SkyBridge will soon support the AliCloud Platform, simplifying hybrid cloud management so that AliCloud cloud infrastructure can become a seamless extension of the corporate datacenter.

Gartner Group forecasts that the total Chinese public cloud market size will reach US$20.7 billion in 2018, from US$5.3 billion in 2013 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31.5%*. AliCloud has established itself as the market leader in cloud computing services in China, and is committed to offering its expertise for sophisticated networking solutions and big-data intelligence to businesses around the world through a global ecosystem that includes partner solutions as well as a network of data centers offering high performance, elastic computing power in the cloud.

As the world transitions to the cloud, cloud infrastructure should not appear as independent from on-premises facilities. The cloud has to operate like it is in the datacenter, with applications running the same manner in either location. Running the Panzura Controller in AliCloud is the first step toward creating a transparent hybrid architecture by solving application performance issues caused when data is not co-located with the application. High-performance computing, antivirus, file auditing, search, indexing, and rendering applications can now run natively in the cloud without any changes.

Panzura SkyBridge will simplify cloud adoption further by solving networking, security, automation, and file system challenges in developing hybrid infrastructures. Panzura SkyBridge will configure and initialize a Layer 2 VPN connection between AliCloud and the corporate datacenter with a single mouse click, connecting with corporate authentication, automatically launching cloud services or application instances, and launching a Panzura Global File system controller in AliCloud.

Security is paramount for all Panzura customers, but especially those that have expanded across the globe. Panzura software encrypts data at rest in the Panzura controllers and in the cloud, and also secures data in transit between controllers and the cloud. Panzura's FIPS 140-2 certification along with customer-retained security keys results in data in any cloud being just as, or more, secure than data within corporate firewalls. 

"The future of the cloud is hybrid where companies can choose the best place to run their applications -- in the cloud, in the datacenter, or even in both places," said Randy Chou, CEO and cofounder of Panzura. "By co-locating the same, consistent file system in AliCloud as in the corporate datacenter(s), enterprises are able to take advantage of the economics and simplicity of the cloud without subjecting users to inherent performance issues that arise when active data and applications are not next to each other."

"As adoption of the cloud accelerates, AliCloud is already innovating ahead of the curve. With the launching of our new data centers in Silicon Valley, Qiandao Lake and Singapore, we seek to meet increasing customer needs with solutions that lead the market in usability, security, stability and low cost, both directly on a pay-as-you-go basis, as well as through partners," said Simon Hu, president of AliCloud. "Our enterprise customers can benefit from massively scalable cloud performance and simpler ways to integrate and manage on-premises infrastructure with the AliCloud Platform around the world. Panzura's SkyBridge and Global File System are examples of how AliCloud is working closely with partners to simplify cloud adoption."

About Panzura
Panzura makes the cloud seamless by solving the last mile of hybrid cloud. By making the file system transparent across the cloud and corporate datacenters as well as eliminating the barriers of connectivity and authentication with the cloud, Panzura enables applications to run without a single change in the cloud, on-premises, or both. 

Panzura transforms the cloud into another corporate datacenter, transparently blending the scale and economics of the cloud with the performance and flexibility of the corporate datacenter

For more information, visit www.panzura.com.

*Gartner report, Emerging Market Analysis: China, Nexus of Forces Trends and Opportunities, by Tina T. Tang, Vincent Fu, Sandy Shen, Jimmie Chang, Daniel Yuen and Luis Anavitarte, was published September 18, 2014.