Cloudian Debuts Free Object-Oriented Storage Platform For Amazon S3

The new version, dubbed the Cloudian Community Edition, provides all the functionality of the full version of the Cloudian software but limits customers to 100 TB of cloud-based storage.

The Cloudian Community Edition also provides support only via the company's online support forum rather than through the company's normal services offerings, said Bob DeFeo, vice president of business development for the Foster City, Calif.-based software developer.

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Cloudian provides technology that allows enterprises and service providers to build a platform for object-oriented storage using the Amazon S3 public storage cloud, DeFeo said.

"The free version of our software platform makes it easier for enterprises and service providers to take on our technology and 'prime the pump' so they better understand the advantage of having Amazon S3 APIs for a cloud storage platform," he said.

Because it relies on the Amazon S3 APIs, the Cloudian platform is compatible with technologies from a variety of other developers including the Citrix cloud platform, the NFS cloud storage gateways from TwinStrata and Riverbed, and the 300-plus application developers that develop for the Amazon S3 platform, DeFeo said.

"We enable enterprises and service providers to build an S3 cloud," he said.

The Cloudian Community Edition provides a complete, ready-to-install platform for building the Amazon S3 cloud, including all the functions needed for billing and chargeback, DeFeo said.

It is available free of charge for customers to use with up to 100 TB of data, if the customer is comfortable with using an on-line community for support. Customers can later upgrade to the full version, which includes silver-level or gold-level support for capacity ranging from 1 TB to "many, many petabytes" of storage, he said.

Cloudian launched its product to market in early 2011. The bulk of the company's revenue comes from Japan, which is where one of the co-founders lives, DeFeo said. The company is currently looking to develop an indirect sales channel in North America, he said.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 18, 2012