"CloudStor uptake up to this point has been driven largely through mouth-to-mouth advertising; one researcher sends something to the next; that next one realises it's a great tool and starts using it," he said.

"I do hope and expect the growth curve will make another bend upwards and grow yet more quickly."

Aben said the trial was continued to test whether the platform could withstand "curveballs", such as university infrastructures, browsers and non-English languages.

As part of its official launch, the storage platform was migrated to AARNet's RETAIN mirror and connected to a storage array network scalable to 80 terabytes allowing for "elbow room" to handle future growth. The provider also erected a user support system to aid users.

A back-up "overflow" allowance to Amazon's S3 Cloud storage service is in continued development, but is unlikely to be enabled for CloudStor in Australia due to the bandwidth costs of moving data between Australian institutions and the Web services giant's closest data centre in Singapore.