Following the threat of imminent implosion cloud storage provider Nirvanix files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in one of the higher profile cases of well regarded cloud startup failure.
The announcement follows an agreement with IBM providing high-speed connections with "some companies" for customers to transfer data from Nirvanix to services. The company specifically suggests the use of IBM SoftLayer, Amazon S3, Google Storage or Microsoft Azure.
"We are dedicating the resources we can to assisting our customers in either returning their data or transitioning their data to alternative providers," a company statement says.
The deadline for data removal? 15 October 2013.
Founded in 2007, Nirvanix (formerly known as StreamLoad) was a high-end enterprise cloud storage darling counting the likes of IBM and Dell as partners. It also received $70 million worth in investment from Kholsa Ventures, Valhalla Partners, Intel, Mission Ventures and Windward Ventures, among others.
However it also saw rapidly changes in leadership, burning through 3 CEOs during the last year alone.
Either way, the lesson learnt from the Nirvanix story remains somewhat obvious-- breaking into enterprise cloud-based storage is really hard if you're not an Amazon, Google or Microsoft.
