Storage company EMC has launched its long-awaited cloud storage offering, which it claims will help firms manage information on a global scale.

EMC had previously referred to the software by its codename Maui, but has now renamed it Atmos.

Atmos will run on commodity server architecture and is targeted at companies with a global infrastructure in which staff need worldwide access and distribution for documents and content. Atmos will hold a storage capacity of up to 360TB.

"Atmos is a global storage system that can be efficient on a large scale, and can be managed centrally by a single administrator," said John Martin, cloud computing infrastructure director of product management at EMC.

EMC will package hardware with Atmos, which will run on industry standard x86 servers.

The firm will initially target the software at businesses with large quantities of unstructured information, such as those working in telecoms and new media.

"We will also be offering a very strong policy management capacity for the Atmos infrastructure," said Martin.

"Customers will be able to write rules on where certain data can reside, overcoming legislation which dictates that certain data cannot be moved out of a country's borders."

Premium customers will also be able to determine the number of copies made of their data.

The software is available now worldwide and will be priced according to customer specifications.