There are clouds, and then there are storage clouds.

A Florida outfit called Zetta, which thinks it can capitalize on the “Perfect Data Storm” currently lashing everybody, claims to have the first enterprise cloud storage service and claims to have altered the cloud storage landscape with its on-demand architecture.

The widgetry, which Zetta says looks and performs like a local network-mounted file server, supports all the unstructured data types such as active file archives, home directories, data migrations, media storage for online distribution and data warehouse extensions that it believes are unserved by either NAS or Web 2.0 storage services.

IDC ventures that Zetta could “usher in an era of cloud storage as an option for primary data.”

Its widgetry is purpose-built for primary storage. If nothing else it’s an alternative to tape.

The company is targeting mid- to large concerns with growing data storage needs, which is practically everybody.

Figure 200-2,000 employees and 20TB of online storage, a company scared of data loss or corruption that’s having trouble managing data growth and that’s facing increasing administrative overhead. Again practically everybody.

The company says it’s overcome adoption concerns with a cloud file system that delivers enterprise features in a multi-tenant environment, leveraging advances in RAID along with PKI-based security and geo-redundant data collection, storage and distribution.

It figures it’s ideal for business continuity, data warehousing, compliance, storage bursting and an active archive.

The company says its SLA guarantees availability, scaling and performance (basically Three9s). It starts at 25 cents a gigabyte a month with a 1TB minimum and free in-bound connectivity or will when it hits commercial availability at the end of September after three betas.

Zetta staff has had a collective hand in standards such as HTTP cookies (and there’s a price on their collective heads, believe you me), SSL, HTTP proxying, server push and global load balancing.

The company raised $11 million from tier one VCs a year ago, six months after it incorporated.

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