August 24th, 2006
Packet storage sounds Clever
By using the packet metaphor of the Internet, CleverSafe says it has made a breakthrough in secure storage.
The word breakthrough is key here. This is not something proprietary folks have already done. It is something new.
CEO Chris Gladwin explained it to me. "The dispersal of the data occurs in the computer where the data starts. It initially goes to 11 storage locations, each operated by a different company, running a different server operating system, in a different part of the world. Our open source software does the dispersal, and no one but the data owner knows what the data is."
If Gladwin’s name is familiar, he was also the founder of of FullAudio, later MusicNow, which was eventually acquired by Circuit City. Back then, Gladwin testified to Congress on behalf of current copyright law. Now he runs a project that writes software licensed under the GPL.
I don’t think Gladwin has changed. The idea that there is necessarily a contradiction between open source and copyright law is faulty.
The Cleversafe listing of benefits is similar to that of the Internet itself, but the biggest benefits are security and privacy. Gladwin and vp-marketing Greg Rudin are getting interest from health care, government, and financial services, as well as Web 2.0 outfits, big enterprises that will pay big money for those benefits.
Since launching in April, however, Gladwin is frankly surprised at the level of interest, and the source of that interest. "We thought it would take a while for organizations to engage in this project. We have people building multi-hundred terabyte grids. We are looking at big, big storage applications." The current release of the software is Version 4.2.2.
I am often accused in comments here of getting carried away concerning open source projects. I’m told there is no business model, or they are just replicating what someone else did. But Cleversafe is a new concept, it has a business model, it’s run by an experienced entrepreneur, and the software is licensed under the GPL.
It’s also not unique in that.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 08/25/06
