For weeks reports have swirled that cloud storage provider Nirvanix is closing. Today that became official.
The company's website has been replaced with a notice that reads:
Nirvanix Customers,
For the past seven years, we have worked to deliver cloud storage solutions. We have concluded that we must begin a wind-down of our business and we need your active participation to achieve the best outcome.
We are dedicating the resources we can to assisting our customers in either returning their data or transitioning their data to alternative providers who provide similar services including IBM SoftLayer, Amazon S3, Google Storage or Microsoft Azure.
We have an agreement with IBM, and a team from IBM is ready to help you. In addition, we have established a higher speed connection with some companies to increase the rate of data transfer from Nirvanix to their servers.
We are working hard to have resources available through October 15 to assist you with the transition process, and have set up a rapid response team that can be reached at (619) 764-5650 [press 2 for customer support during normal business hours] or (888) 791-0365 after business hours, or contact customersupport@nirvanix.com.
Please check back to this web page periodically for status updates.
We thank you for your support and patience.
The Nirvanix team
[MORE: Gartner's adivce to Nirvanix customers: PANIC!]
While this confirms the news, it does not answer questions. Executives have been mum since the reports surfaced, and this statement sheds no light on why this company that received $70 million in venture financing has all of a sudden gone belly up.
Many have speculated. Perhaps the company's concentration on cloud storage - and not compute - was too narrowly focused. Maybe when IBM bought SoftLayer that was the final nail in the coffin for the company's plans to be bought out (all the references to IBM being a 'partner' in this message point to that being a major factor). Or perhaps just the economics of competing against big companies like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google in a race to the bottom cloud pricing game just wasn't economically feasible anymore.
Initial reports suggested that Nirvanix gave its customers two weeks notice to get data out of its cloud. That appears to be extended until October 15 - but given the above language, it does not sounds definitive that the company will remain open that long.
Either way, one lesson from the situation is clear: If you have a lot of data in the cloud, have a plan for how to get it out quickly if need be.
Senior Writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing for Network World and NetworkWorld.com. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.