Continuing theCube’s coverage of NetApp’s special VMworld event at AT&T Park yesterday evening, co-hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante spoke with Exostar’s director of IT, Raj Dasgupta about the company’s cloud computing initiatives. Exostar, which specializes in providing software-as-a-service (SaaS) for aerospace, defense, and life sciences industries, regularly encounters many of the security and privacy issues that have people talking about the cloud.

According to Dasgupta, Exostar has been providing services to aerospace and defense companies for 12 years and has more recently decided to branch out into life sciences, such as drug tech companies. Because of the nature of those businesses, data governance is a big concern, and Exostar has leveraged the power of NetApp’s storage systems to secure data and segregate it even in a multi-tenant environment.

With all of the talk of NSA spying and the PRISM program, many of Exostar’s clients have expressed concern, particularly in the healthcare industry. Exostar has used the same security practices that work for its aerospace and defense clients to assuage those concerns.

Nevertheless, there is still a segment of executives who are skeptical of cloud computing’s security, particularly because of the lack of industry standards for a secure overly. Many IT managers are afraid to take the risk.

With NetApp technology, Exostar has been able to provide customers with tighter integration of technology from other vendors, such as VMware and Cisco, allowing them to lay the foundation for the future. “NetApp, from our perspective, is one of the leading storage vendors,” Dasgupta said.

Dave Vellante closed with his own analysis of NetApp’s success stating that it is a specialist company, the last large independent storage company. Therefore, it is able to exclusively focus on providing ideal storage for clients. NetApp has made big bets and has survived the obstacles along the way.

Watch the interview in its entirety below: