By William Fellows

Outsourced storage start-up Storage Networks Inc notes the storage and application service provider deals that Hewlett- Packard Co and Qwest Communications Inc have forged (see separate story) will mean that users are going to be locked into a one supplier storage-server scene.

The Boston, Massachusetts-based company says it already offers its outsourced storage services to other application and internet service providers; six out of its 45 customers are of this kind. It is renting out 72Tb storage at its six datacenters and is building six others. It says it has just raised $50m in a second round of funding following $10m it won in a first round, and claims to have $11m in bookings, most on 36-month contracts.

It mostly uses EMC storage but has some Data General Clariion boxes too, though they are effectively the same thing since the former bought the latter. It’s just about to set up shop in Europe (London) and now has 175 staff from 12 last year. We’ll go where the fibre is, it says.