There’s a linear relationship that’s been budding from coast to the other. IceWEB, Inc., a Unified Data Storage manufacturer for cloud storage networks, received another contract award from strategic partner nDataStor for an IceWEB Storage System 5000-HC. 

nDataStor provides data storage networking and computing solutions and has built a business on a solid foundation of advanced technology products and services. By offering an unmatched combination of reliability, simplicity, performance, storage expertise, integration and support, the company is delivering some of the best solutions available to their clients. And those solutions include IceWEB’s Unified Data Storage units. 

The IceWEB 5000 has the ability to scale into multiple disk shelves capable of storing 100's of terabytes worth of unstructured data. The system is the perfect solution for high growth imaging environments. The end customer in this deal is one of the largest federally funded research facilities in the country, and the IceWEB Storage System 5000-HC will be used to store millions of cellular images for the institution's cancer research.

Mr. Peter Prieto, President of nDataStor commented, "This order is a significant win for nDataStor and IceWEB. The highly scalable IceWEB storage appliance will be a marquee install with this high profile customer, which is expected to generate 100's of TB's in additional orders as the institutions cellular image storage management requirements expand."

The partnership between IceWEB and nDataStor has been a successful endeavor since its inception. This new 5000-HC order is representative of the success of the company’s two tier distribution model – the West Coast Channel Sales Manager (CSM) works closely with the channel partner, nDataStor, to engage an organization that the partner already has established a relationship with. 

This is the IceWEB’s first digital footprint in the Pacific region and the deal took approximately 180 days from gaining the client’s attention to the end customer order. The deal is also indicative of the company’s reach – a sleepy $23 million small-cap network and cloud attached storage company from Virginia is landing clients in California, the technology womb of the country. 

Shares of IceWEB are up over 50% this year so far to trade at $.19 a share. In April, shares spiked up over $.43 a share on news that the company would be offering a financing program for small businesses who want to leverage cloud storage but just didn’t have the cash. Share of IceWEB today are up $.01, or 5.5% to trade at $.19 a share.

The majority of IceWEB’s business comes from several Federal Government Agencies ordering 48+ TB systems in a move that signifies the growing acceptability and demand for cloud storage providers. Cloud storage is a relatively new technology and certainly has its issues to address – security, cost, and scalability, for example – but has massive potential to be embraced worldwide. 

Desktop applications that were once hundreds of dollars, like Microsoft Office’s Word and Excel programs, are now available online, for free no less. Google released its version of the two applications on its cloud servers, called Google Docs, a few years ago and millions of companies all over the world are using the search behemoth’s 28G of free computing power and space.

If IceWEB can stay in the game, they will become one of the major hardware providers of this century because they’re developing and releasing their products earlier than anyone else. Remember when Bill Gates owned an obscure privately held company called Microsoft and promised to put a PC in every American home by the turn of the century? Everyone thought he was crazy, and then the PC operating system had its day – so too will cloud computing.