Cool Startup: Clearsky Data

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ClearSky Data, a Boston based startup just came out of stealth mode a few days ago, and provides a fully managed “Global Storage Network” solution. Looking more deeply into their business model, we realize they are akin to a SAN-based CDN. The founders, Ellen Rubin and Lazarus Vekiarides are startup veterans, with experience taking early stage startups to successful IPO. In addition, their VP of Product Management spent a few years at Akamai as a Product Manager in the Media division, so we’ll likely see some CDN like services in the near future.

What is a SAN based CDN? In ClearSky’s case, they offer a Three Tier Storage Solution; the 1st Tier is a caching server that sits at the customer premise, which in turn talks to Tier 2 Storage located at the nearest PoP. The first two tiers store the more popular content. Then we have Tier 3 Storage, which is S3 and stores rarely accessed content, as illustrated below. What is difference between CDN Origin Storage and ClearSky Storage? ClearSky can store all the content that a CDN can, plus more complex data that isn’t a great fit for CDN architecture; plus they store data meant for employee use only across the WAN supported by SLA’s. Thus, we have a first of its kind Hybrid SAN CDN business model.

Background

Company: ClearSky Data
HQ: Boston
Raised: 12M in Series A
VCs: General Catalyst Partners and Highland Capital Partners
Founded: 2014
No. of Employees: 30
Founders: Ellen Rubin (CEO) and Lazarus Vekiarides (CTO)
Product: Global Network Storage using CDN like architecture
ClearSky-CDN

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