Cloud startup Nirvanix appointed Dru Borden as its new chief executive officer, six months after he took on the role of the company’s chief strategy officer.  He’s replacing outgoing CEO Scott Genereux, who apparently got an offer from Oracle he couldn’t refuse.

Genereux joined Nirvanix from QLogic, where he served as senior vice president of worldwide sales. He became the cloud storage provider’s CEO and president in July 2010, shortly after the startup raised $10 million from a number of big name investors including Intel Capital. Borden may not have $10 million in VC money to work with, but Nirvanix is in much better shape now than it was two years ago.

The Nirvanix Board has appointed Dru Borden, Chief Strategy Officer of Nirvanix, as its new CEO. The appointment became effective Monday of this week. The Board has been extremely pleased with Dru’s performance this year and is confident in his ability to lead the company based on his extensive knowledge of the cloud space and his relationships with large enterprise customers, particularly in Nirvanix’s largest vertical, the media and entertainment sector.

Oracle seems just as impressed by the performance of Nirvanix’s former CEO. As the database vendor’s new senior vice president of global hardware strategy, Genereux will spearhead strategy and planning for the company’s entire server, networking and storage operation. This includes Oracle’s high-end Engineered Systems, which rival IBM’s PureSystem appliance line-up.

While Oracle is getting more aggressive with its infrastructure solutions, Nirvanix is pursuing opportunities to up its service. It recently upgraded its cloud environment with new solutions from Brocade, including Ethernet and app delivery switches as well as NetIronCER 2000 Series routers and Fibre Channel SAN devices.  Genereux and Borden were both guests on TheCube at VMworld this year, where they discussed the industry and the company goals among other things.  See the full clip below.