Cleversafe, UTP Announce Innovative Open Source Storage Project

Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and Cleversafe.org jointly announce the launch of the Cleversafe Dispersed Storage Open Source project, created at University Technology Park At IIT (UTP).

Cleversafe.org is an Open Source community committed to storing the world’s data. Its initial project, Dispersed Storage, will be showcased today at the MySQL Developer’s Conference in Santa Clara, California. The Dispersed Storage project includes both client software that can be used to access a test dispersed storage grid as well as software to create an independently hosted Dispersed Storage grid. Cleversafe.org is demonstrating the Cleversafe Dispersed Storage Open Source project and an Open Source project to connect the MySQL database engine to a Dispersed Storage grid.

UTP opened its Business Incubator last fall with Cleversafe as one of the park’s first tenants. At full build-out, University Technology Park will have 1.5 million square feet of space to house mid-sized growing, high-growth, and spin-off technology companies. In addition to state-of-the-art wet and dry labs and access to the resources of the world- renowned IIT Research Institute, UTP will also offer services that smaller young companies could otherwise not afford. UTP is designed to accommodate the space needs of those companies that are successful and “graduate” beyond the incubator stage so that they may expand their business.

“Cleversafe was established by a group of people who wanted to create a better way to store data by eliminating the reliability and security limitations of existing data storage methods,” said Chris Gladwin President and CEO of Cleversafe. “We decided to open source our Dispersed Storage software in order to generate broad, global support.”

Instead of storing a copy or multiple copies of data, Cleversafe Information Dispersal works by breaking data up into small pieces, then storing each of these pieces separately. These Information Dispersal Algorithms also are able to perfectly recreate the original data with any majority of the data slices.

Slicing data into small subsets before transmission or storage, Cleversafe.org has made transmission and storage more private and secure. Special algorithms on these data slices ensure that all the data can be perfectly created with any majority of the slices, making it reliable. The software is available under the GPL Open Source license to enable easy, universal access to this innovative technology.

Founded in 1890, IIT is a Ph.D.-granting technological university awarding degrees in the sciences, mathematics and engineering, as well as architecture, psychology, design, business and law. IIT’s interprofessional, technology-focused curriculum prepares the university’s 6,200 students for leadership roles in an increasingly complex and culturally diverse global workplace.