Cleversafe Launches First ‘Dispersed’ Storage Network

Upstart open-source storage vendor Cleversafe, which recently was a finalist in eWEEK’s 2008 Excellence Awards for new software, identifies itself as the “leading provider of Dispersed Storage technology and software.” We’ll define that in a minute; read on, please.

The Chicago-based company announced this week that its first appliance-based products to create a dsNet (Dispersed Storage Network)–a brand-new platform idea for storing and archiving digital content–have been deployed in production through an agreement with five key partners.

These DSP (Dispersed Storage Provider) partners comprise a U.S.-based consortium of service providers, hosting companies and telecommunications companies that joined Cleversafe’s First Mover Program. The group of companies has joined to deliver a geographically dispersed storage system with “limitless scalability, security, reliability and longevity, all in an extremely cost-effective manner compared to traditional storage architectures,” they say.

That’s a big order for such a small company. But in this Web 2.0 world, small companies often prove to make a big difference.

In a dispersed cloud storage setup, multiple service providers and hosting companies can share resources and deliver reliable, secure and private storage services to their customers. A dsNet is a platform that uses economies of scale for storage capacity, built-in security and privacy at a competitive price compared to traditional storage. There’s safety–and economy–in numbers.

It also doesn’t hurt that Cleversafe’s software is open source, devoid of licensing fees for the providers. Those savings, ostensibly, can be passed on to customers.

Methinks we’ll be revisiting this concept again soon and see how it’s working.

This is a creative variation on the proprietary cloud storage offerings that Amazon, Mozy, Carbonite, Box.com and others now offer. For more detailed info, go here and check it out.