Atmos Online, EMC’s cloud-based storage service will not enter full production as a EMC branded service, the storage giant announced on July 7^th. The company will continue to test and development level access to Atmos for customers and service partners, but it has scrapped plans to go to make Atmos its brand cloud-service offering.

Customers and partners got their first official look at Atmos Online at last year’s EMC World, when it was seen by some observers as the spearhead of an EMC strategy to make cloud storage relevant to high-end corporate users. This strategy, which would appear to compete with the companies ambition to become, in alliance with Cisco, the private cloud infrastructure provider of choice, is now on the back burner – at least for now.

Some competitors, notably Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and possibly even Amazon, may see EMC’s decision to push forward with a full blooded cloud service offering as an invitation to accelerate alternative strategies of their own. However, EMC is abandoning the market altogether.

A number of companies, including AT&T, which has based its Synaptics cloud-storage service on Atmos technology, will continue to develop services based on EMC’s cloud APIs. This will at least keep EMC’s cloud technology alive in the marketing, and growing technology platform footprint, if not actually service market share. If, as may yet happen, corporate users suddenly develop a taste for public over private cloud storage, EMC has the option to revive its Atmos plans.