An Interview with Russ Kennedy of Cleversafe

By Ryan Kamauff

Recently, I asked Russ Kennedy, Vice President of Product Strategy, Marketing and Customer Solutions, of Cleversafe some probing questions about his firm and their capabilities. We talked about why enterprises need Cleversafe, how they measure ROI, and what problems Cleversafe solves better than anyone else.

Why Enterprises Need Cleversafe:

Cleversafe enables the management of petabytes of data that can be large or small, structured or unstructured. It manages and performs to scale, where other solutions fall apart at the petabyte level. Cleversafe limits the need for duplication and other factors, while stably making the data available for applications. Cleversafe stores a single copy of the data with a level of reliability that is greater than multiple or redundant copies of data, offering reliability to the 7 or 8 “9′s.”

What is the ROI of Cleversafe and how is it measured?

Cleversafe cuts down on the total cost of ownership (TCO) for data storage. By limiting the need for duplication, they can cut 60 or 70% of total data storage costs. One such prime example is Shutterfly, a flagship Cleversafe customer. Shutterfly was able to cut their data storage costs by 66% in a single year, by removing old technologies and layers of technologies. They were able to reduce IT infrastructure costs and focus more on cost of goods sold. Cleversafe also has a total cost of ownership calculator.

What specific problems does Cleversafe solve better than anyone else?

1. Cleversafe provides increased reliability in storage capability, and they offer information dispersal and data management
2. Cleversafe provides for a growth rate in storage that is unparalleled in traditional storage methods. Cleversafe enables users to scale out and just add storage or access nodes as they see fit.

How do Cleversafe Strategic Partnerships increase the viability of Cleversafe’s offering?

Cleversafe has partnered with a wide variety of third parties to make their offering deeper and more flexible. Their partnership with Panzura enables better integration with legacy systems (lowering barriers to entry). Their integration with Hadoop allows for Big Data capabilities, across Cleversafe infrastructure. Cleversafe is continuing to add partners and work with them to multiply their offering.

Lastly, what capabilities does Cleversafe render obsolete?

Cleversafe’s unique approach to decentralized storage and data (through storage and access nodes) renders technologies such as RAID obsolete for the enterprise. As well, de-duplication and re-duplication capabilities can be eliminated, as Cleversafe safely stores petabytes of data, once.

For more on Cleversafe, check them out here.

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