Cleversafe was founded in 2004 and has received $91.4 million in VC funding. The HQ is based in Chicago, and they have around 100 employees. They offer object-based storage solutions to companies that need PB’s of storage. They have a unique process of storing objects involving a technology called slice-and-disperse, that replaces traditional RAID functionality. They offer a storage solution that runs on low cost hardware, thus eliminating the need to buy expensive storage arrays like the Isilon.
Cleversafe was founded by Chris Gladwin, an MIT graduate that has created over 1,000 patents related to Dispersed Storage Technology. Shutterfly is their signature client. Shutterfly stores a massive 80PBs of data, surpassing the amount of storage capacity of most CDNs. Their value proposition is that their storage replaces the need for CDN origin storage.
They have developed a technique called SmartRead, that predicts the optimal network route and storage node, that is best suited to deliver content. Supposedly, their technique is superior to the way that CDNs deliver content from storage to end user. I’ll debate this in another post. Regardless, my guess is this company will get acquired in the next 12 months for a $1B+ by HP, IBM, or EMC, for their awesome technology.