Infrastructure-as-a-service providers aren’t the only group that is capitalizing on the rapid adoption of cloud storage in the enterprise. The trend is also lifting the sails of management providers such as Panzura Inc. that focus on easing the transition from private data centers to cloud computing.

To fuel its growth, the startup today announced it has raised $32 million in funding from a group of investors led by Matrix Partners. Other participants include Meritech Capital Partners, storage drive maker Western Digital Corp. and Chevron Corp., a repeat backer. The energy giant first invested in Panzura as part of its 2010 Series B round and has since become a flagship customer of its hybrid cloud storage platform.

The Panzura Global File System, as the startup calls its software, promises to help companies take better advantage of their remote storage resources. It achieves this by pooling information in a low-cost cloud environment and only downloading files onto on-premises hardware when users require fast local access. The result, according to Panzura, is a big reduction in the amount of infrastructure that needs to be installed at corporate locations.

It’s a similar value proposition to the one offered by Nasuni Inc., a rival storage startup that closed a $25 million funding round last month. Panzura sets itself apart with a number of features designed to make data kept on its platform more accessible. The most notable of the bunch is a capability called Global File Locking that enables users to simultaneously edit a file without undoing one another’s changes, even if they happen to be located a continent apart.

Panzura will use today’s funding to finance the development more advanced features for its platform. The startup is focusing its efforts on a broad spectrum of use cases ranging from conventional virtualized applications to high-speed databases and analytics services.

Panzura claims to have landed more than 100 new customers last year while bringing more than 26 additional petabytes of enterprise storage under its management in the process.

Image courtesy of Panzura