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Cleversafe Goes Open Source With its Storage Software

Cleversafe, which specializes in dispersed storage technology, has traditionally relied on proprietary software for its technology solution. Unlike mirroring stored data, or using RAID, dispersed storage calls for slicing stored data and spreading it out among servers, reassembling it as needed. The benefit is reduced storage overhead. Now, the company has released the next generation of its software as open source, and is calling for software developers to create their own solutions for dispersed storage. For those keeping an eye on fast-growing storage and archive repositories, this could lead to some meaningful cost reductions.

Depending on whose market research you look at, and the size of the business you're talking about, storage capacity requirements roughly double every year--nothing to shake a stick at. This has given rise to several new efforts in the overall "data deduplication" space. Cleversafe's dispersed storage cuts into the recurring cost of capacity growth by avoidance of many kinds of data duplication in favor of storing segments of data in separate repositories, where software can quickly reassemble the segments. The company's open source call is aimed at developers who can deliver new, efficient implementations.

"We are developing a fundamentally better way to store digital content on a global scale and believe open source development is the ideal model for achieving this goal,” said John Quigley, one of two Cleversafe.org community managers the company has named, in announcing the open source effort. “There are a number of exciting new development projects that we are launching to challenge open source developers to further enhance the technology.” Interested developers should check in at Cleversafe.org.

For a view of how Cleversafe approaches reduction in the number of servers required for storage archives, look here. The new open source software offering is downloadable here.

• Cleversafe

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