Enterprises are being offered a new way of tackling the cloud storage challenge with an expanded collaboration between data management specialists CommVault and IT giant Microsoft.

The new deal will see CommVault’s Simpana software bundled with space on Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform.

Starting at around US$50,000, the new solution includes up to 62TB of Azure storage capacity, plus Simpana 9 Express software for archiving and backup. More space is on offer for larger configurations.

Simpana already supports backup, recovery and archiving for the full range of Microsoft application environments, including Exchange, SharePoint 2010, SQL Server, and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V virtualisation.

Indeed, the partnership between the companies stretches back over 10 years. With this announcement, Microsoft and CommVault have also stated they will be collaborating more closely on their sales and marketing activities.

Citing research from Gartner, CommVault says enterprise data usage is expected to double every two years in the immediate future, and up 70% of the data being held by enterprises in costly primary storage is infrequently accessed, meaning it could be transferred to a cheaper location.

Go here to watch execs from both companies discussing the new project.