Cleversafe and Partners Launch the First Commercial Dispersed Storage Network

Company announces key partners to deliver first production deployment across
the United States

CHICAGO, Aug. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Cleversafe Inc., the leading provider of
Dispersed Storage(TM) technology and software, today announced that the first
commercial appliance-based products to create a Dispersed Storage Network
(dsNet) -- a new platform for storing and archiving digital content -- have
been deployed in production through an agreement with five key Dispersed
Storage Provider (DSP) partners. The DSP partners are a US-based consortium of
service providers, hosting companies and telecommunications companies that
have joined Cleversafe's First Mover Program.
The DSPs and Cleversafe have joined together 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. With dispersal, multiple service providers and hosting
companies can efficiently share resources and deliver more reliable, secure
and private storage services to their customers than is available on the
market today. A Dispersed Storage Network (dsNet) is an ideal platform for
delivering storage as a service because it provides superior reliability, as
well as built-in security and privacy, at a very attractive price point when
compared to traditional storage methods.
A Cleversafe dsNet divides digital content into "slices" using Information
Dispersal Algorithms (IDAs) and disperses the slices, via secure network
connections, to multiple storage nodes on a Dispersed Storage Network. Each
individual slice contains too little information to be useful, but any
threshold of the slices can be used to perfectly recreate the original data.
The dsNet can tolerate multiple simultaneous failures of hardware,
administrators or storage locations, while keeping data secure and easily
accessible.
To meet market requirements for a production dsNet, Cleversafe is
partnering with the following companies: onShore Networks, FastRoot
International, Merrimac Solutions, PinPoint Network Solutions and Cyber
Development Group. Each DSP partner has purchased and deployed Cleversafe
appliances and is operating those components as part of a multi-site
production dsNet. Each DSP partner can in turn provide Dispersed Storage
services to their customers on the production dsNet. Cleversafe is also using
a portion of the dsNet for its production data and to provide Dispersed
Storage services on a trial basis for candidates and customers.
"Cleversafe's dispersed storage networks may well prove to be one of the
most exciting and the most disruptive storage technologies we have seen in
years," said Stel Valavanis, president of OnShore Networks, one of
Cleversafe's DSP partners. "We're very excited to be on the ground floor of
this revolutionary technology, which will bring tremendous reliability and
financial benefit to our customers."
A Dispersed Storage Network is built by deploying and inter-connecting
three appliance-based components from Cleversafe:
-- Accesser(TM) -- Dispersed Storage router that slices, disperses and
retrieves data throughout the network. One or more Accessers can be deployed
in a single dsNet.
-- Slicestor(TM) -- Dispersed Storage servers that store the slices.
Multiple Slicestors can be deployed in a single rack in a datacenter or be
distributed around the globe.
-- dsNet Manager(TM) -- Dispersed Storage network manager that monitors
the components of a dsNet out-of-band to gather information, create alerts and
produce administrative reports
"We were very pleased with the initial experience we received from working
with Cleversafe," said John Quinn, Technology and Architecture Leader,
Merrimac Solutions Inc., a Cleversafe First Mover partner. "Everything from
the design of the product to the training to the support and assistance we
received during the initial deployment from Cleversafe was first rate."
Cleversafe's Dispersed Storage technology is the ideal way to store
massive amounts of growing, unstructured digital content. Cleversafe's
components enable organizations to build dsNets of any size that store slices
of their data rather than copies. With dispersal, multiple service providers
and hosting companies can efficiently share resources and deliver highly
reliable, secure and private storage services to their customers. A dsNet is
extremely secure and fault-tolerant. Access to an individual slice does not
compromise the data and only a subset of the slices are necessary to perfectly
retrieve the data, resulting in seamless data access without disruption even
when sites or systems are down. Since data is not copied, there are fewer bits
stored on a dsNet than with copy-based architectures, dramatically reducing
costs in hardware, bandwidth, management, power and space.
"The vision of the company is beginning to be realized with these initial
deployments by the members of the First Mover Program," said S. Christopher
Gladwin, president and CEO of Cleversafe. "We are very excited to have
partners that are delivering dispersed storage as a service to their end user
customers."
For more information about the members of Cleversafe's First Mover Program
please visit the member websites: OnShore Networks: http://www.onshore.com;
FastRoot International: http://www.fastroot.com; Merrimac Solutions:
http://www.merrimacsolutions.com; PinPoint Network Solutions:
http://www.pnptnetworks.com; Cyber Development Group:
http://www.cyberdevgroup.com.
Pricing and Availability
Dispersed storage services are available on a capacity and data transfer
basis from each of the DSPs in the Cleversafe First Mover program. Access to
dsNet resources will be controlled through deployment of a Cleversafe Accesser
component, which must be purchased through a DSP or authorized Cleversafe
reseller.
For more information, please visit http://www.cleversafe.com, or call
312-423-6640 to speak to a Cleversafe representative.
About Cleversafe
Cleversafe is the leader in dispersed storage technology, the ideal way to
store large, growing amounts of digital content cost effectively. Founded in
2004, the company is backed by world-class investors including NEA, OCA
Ventures, Harrison Street Capital and Alsop-Louie Partners. Cleversafe is also
the sponsor of an open source community movement to help standardize Dispersed
Storage(TM) technology through its cleversafe.org project. For more
information, please visit http://www.cleversafe.com or
http://www.cleversafe.org.
SOURCE Cleversafe Inc.

Patricia Colby of Page One PR, +1-650-543-4703, patricia@pageonepr.com, for
Cleversafe Inc.