Natick-based Nasuni, the gateway for businesses to cloud storage providers, just released its 2010 numbers, boasting 200% customer growth in the fourth quarter alone.

Along with customer growth in Q4 came a doubling in the capacity of files stored. According to Nasuni, this means their customers achieved savings of over 30 percent for the tens of millions of files they store. The company doubled its workforce in 2010, and plans to expand globally this later this year.

Just how booming is the cloud storage market? We turned to recent reports from leading market research firms, and its set to grow significantly over the next several years. Here are a few data points that speak to Nasuni’s opportunity, growth and plans for expansion:

• Cloud computing is identified as the top technology priority of CIOs worldwide in 2011 (Gartner)
• Worldwide cloud systems management software market will grow at a 45% CAGR between 2010 and 2015 to be a $2.5B market (IDC)
• Currently 3% of CIOs have the majority of IT running in the cloud, a number expected to jump to 43% in the next four years (Gartner)
• In 2010 the Americas represented 63% of the worldwide cloud systems management software market (IDC)

In line with these projections of business adoption of cloud services, Nasuni recently launched a native data migration service to make it easier and more efficient for businesses looking to move large data sets to the cloud.

“2010 marked an inflection point with regard to making storage-as-a-service a viable business consideration,” said CEO Andres Rodriguez. “2011 has started strong and we should see even higher growth not only within specific sectors but also across the board for organizations feeling the pain of data growth and hitting capacity limitations.”

Industries Nasuni is seeing the highest adoption of cloud storage and file growth from include manufacturing, engineering, architecture, law firms, academia, business services like consulting, and healthcare.

Nasuni was founded in 2009, focused on delivering a secure gateway to cloud storage that would make moving to the cloud more feasible for businesses. Their flagship product, the Nasuni Filer, leverages cloud resources to simplify things like file access, security, back-up and recovery while eliminating expensive hardware infrastructure needed with other similar products.

Robert Sarkes, a leading IT consultant in the environment and energy markets, is quoted speaking to more specifics of the product that set it apart from the competition: “Nasuni makes the cloud useful for a company like my client’s. I wasn’t happy with many of the alternatives on the market. We required fast access to files and one with hard-core security. Nasuni solved these two issues through local caching and by holding the keys. Installation was simple and Nasuni provides full service storage provider benefits – giving us credentials, end to end encryption, consolidated billing, monitoring and support so even if there’s an issue with either Amazon or Rackspace, Nasuni notifies us directly and immediately.”

Announcement of Nasuni’s growth numbers come just a week after the company was awarded Gold in TechTarget’s Storage magazine’s 2010 Products of the Year. And if you recall the end of last year, Nasuni was honored as winner of the 2010 MITX Technology Award for Cloud Computing here in the Hub.

In December 2009 the company raised $8 million Series A from North Bridge Venture Partners and Sigma Partners. And this past December the company closed a $15 million Series B, which also included Flybridge Capital Partners. As mentioned, the company plans to use this most recent injection of capital to expand globally and capitalize on the fact that growth to date has mainly been here in the States.