CHICAGO, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Cleversafe Inc., the leading provider of Dispersed Storage(TM) technology and software, today announced the first commercially available products to create a Dispersed Storage Network (dsNet) -- a new platform for storing and archiving digital assets. The Cleversafe dsNet can deliver limitless scalability, security, reliability, longevity, all in an extremely cost-effective manner compared to traditional storage architectures.

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The nature of data storage is changing from smaller files and structured applications to more complex digital content, media and imaging. Storage architectures that rely on redundant copies are expensive and difficult to scale and secure, and less capable of handling massive data growth over time. 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.

"Just as the packet-switching technologies of the Internet made massive scalability possible for networking and communications, so Cleversafe's Dispersed Storage technology will ensure cost-effective and massive scalability, longevity, security and reliability for digital assets," said Chris Gladwin, founder and CEO of Cleversafe. "These products enable organizations building new systems for storing huge amounts of data to begin to see for themselves how Dispersed Storage fits into their environment."

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 -- Manager -- Dispersed Storage network manager that monitors the components of a dsNet out-of-band to gather information, create alerts and produce administrative reports

"During 2008, the industry will see significant shifts in the way data is stored, managed, and protected," said John Webster, Principal IT Advisor, Illuminata, Inc. "Cleversafe's dispersed storage networks may well prove to be the most disruptive storage technology since the emergence of RAID."

Cleversafe's Dispersed Storage technology is the ideal way to store massive amounts of growing, unstructured digital assets. Cleversafe's components enable organizations to build dsNets of any size that store slices of their data rather than copies. With these fault-tolerant dsNets, 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.

Cleversafe's dsNet offering incorporates both iSCSI and block device interfaces, which allow any dsNet to appear as a network device on the desktop, enabling users to transparently store and retrieve files as if they were using a local hard drive. The dsNet also easily integrates with many existing backup and archiving applications.

Pricing and Availability

Cleversafe dsNet components can be used by companies to build and host a dsNet for their internal use, and by hosting companies and ISPs that plan to build and operate dsNets for their customers. The dsNet components will be available for select customers from Cleversafe or certified partners on March 31, 2008. List prices for the dsNet components are as follows:

-- Slicestor - $11,300 -- Accesser - $12,300 -- Manager - $12,300

A typical configuration of 8 Slicestors, 2 Accessers and 1 Manager delivers 24TB of raw capacity -- which can be configured with up to 13-nines of calculated reliability -- lists at $127,000. 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 assets 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/.

CONTACT: Patricia Colby of Page One PR, +1-415-875-7494,
patricia@pageonepr.com, for Cleversafe Inc.

Web site: http://www.cleversafe.com/