Cleversafe Inc. was an

object storage Object storage (also known as object-based storage or blob storage) is a computer data storage approach that manages data as "blobs" or "objects", as opposed to other storage architectures like file systems, which manage data as a file hierarchy, ...

software and systems developer company.The New York Times: A Move to Secure Data by Scattering the Pieces
/ref> It was founded in 2004 by Chris Gladwin, an American technology entrepreneur. The company was acquired by IBM in 2015, and became an integral part of

IBM Cloud Object Storage IBM Cloud Object Storage is a service offered by IBM for storing and accessing unstructured data. The object storage service can be deployed on-premises, as part of IBM Cloud Platform offerings, or in hybrid form. The offering can store any type ...

.ChicagoBusiness: Gladwin's $1.3 billion Cleversafe win could change the face of Chicago tech
/ref>

History

Cleversafe Inc was launched as a

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

in 2004 by Chris Gladwin, an American inventor, computer engineer and technology entrepreneur.SB: How Chris Gladwin founded a new storage process with Cleversafe
/ref> Gladwin created Cleversafe because his prior company, MusicNow, Inc., deployed systems to store all digitized music and he felt that approach used by the enterprise data storage products could be vastly improved. Cleversafe had its headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, and was originally based in

Illinois Institute of Technology The Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Illinois Tech and IIT, is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the m ...

incubator, where the company matured for the first years of its existence.Illinois Tech: Cleversafe, UTP Announce Innovative Open Source Storage Project
/ref> From the beginning, Cleversafe's initial focus as a startup was on developing new dispersed storage technology for

unstructured data Unstructured data (or unstructured information) is information that either does not have a pre-defined data model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner. Unstructured information is typically plain text, text-heavy, but may contain data such ...

in the

petabyte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

-plus range, which the company called " Dispersed Storage Network" or dsNet. According to ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' and other sources, Cleversafe's approach was to break the data into pieces and then disperses it in multiple locations in order to additionally enhance data security and reliability.Chicago Innovation: Cleversafe
/ref> The initial funding was provided by OCA Ventures. The Cleversafe

Board of Directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

recruited John Morris as its new president and CEO in 2013. Morris successfully increased the value of Cleversafe to the $1.4 billion paid by IBM when it purchased the company two years later in 2015.

Awards

In 2008, Cleversafe was a winner of the Chicago Innovation Awards in the category "Data Backup and Security". In 2011, it was also supported by

In-Q-Tel In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the lates ...

, a

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firm related to the

US intelligence community The United States Intelligence Community (IC) is a group of separate US federal government, U.S. federal government intelligence agencies and subordinate organizations that work to conduct Intelligence assessment, intelligence activities which ...

. Forbes notes: "In 2013, the company was the 2nd largest

cloud storage Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which data, said to be on "the cloud", is stored remotely in logical pools and is accessible to users over a network, typically the Internet. The physical storage spans multiple servers (so ...

vendor by volume and received over $100 million in venture funding from NEA, OCA Ventures, Presideo,

Motorola Solutions Motorola Solutions, Inc. is an American technology, communications, and security company, headquartered in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. It is the legal successor of Motorola, Inc., following the spinoff of the mobile phone division into Motorola ...

, BVC and Alsop Louis Partners. In 2015, John Morris was named CEO of the Year by the Illinois Technology Association at its 16th annual CityLights Awards for his leadership of Cleversafe.

Technology application

Cleversafe developed and commercialized a method for storing data by virtualizing the data using information dispersal

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

s and distributing slices of data across a number (N) of different servers where only a threshold (M) of those servers needed to be available in order for the original data to be fully available. This method allowed a configurable number (M-N) of servers to fail while maintaining complete data availability. With a low overhead of 1 – M/N, information dispersal provided very high data availability and reliability as compared to making multiple copies.InfoWorld Tech Watch:Cleversafe slices up storage to increase big data reliability
/ref> Unlike traditional file systems that use a tree-like hierarchical structure that can be difficult to scale as the file system grows into the millions or billions of files, Cleversafe provided an object storage system using the REST protocol to store very large amounts of data in a flat system where files are identified by unique object IDs. Cleversafe developed a technology called SecureSlice – a confidentiality feature that virtualizes and

encrypts In cryptography, encryption (more specifically, encoding) is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plain ...

unstructured data, stores the key with that data and then breaks up that data, making the slices unrecognizable and inherently secure by placing it on several different storage nodes. The company also develop PerfectBits, a technology to ensure that every bit in a digital object is read exactly as written, even when reading massive amounts of data where the number of bits read is greater than the

bit error rate In digital transmission, the number of bit errors is the number of received bits of a data stream over a communication channel that have been altered due to noise, interference, distortion or bit synchronization errors. The bit error rate (BER) ...

of computer hardware.

Patents

Cleversafe developed a significant patent portfolio for large object storage systems. In 2013, the company was listed on

IEEE Spectrum ''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited and published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. In 2010, ''IEEE Spe ...

’s Patent Power index. At the time of its acquisition by the IBM, the company had 318 patents granted by the

US Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alex ...

. Jason Resch was the most prolific inventor at Cleversafe and was a named inventor on 139 issued US patents and 315 patent applications in 2015.

Acquisition by IBM

In November 2015, under the guidance of CEO John Morris, Cleversafe was acquired by IBM for $1.4 billion and became an integral part of its IBM Cloud Object Storage division. The acquisition was made to fill a technological gap of the IBM's cloud storage capability, specifically by applying its dispersed object storage technology, which "encrypts unstructured data, stores the key with the data, and then breaks up that data and puts it on several different storage nodes." As ''Network Computing'' stated: "With the acquisition of object storage and erasure coding technologies, IBM bolsters its cloud position."Network Computing: Why IBM Bought Cleversafe
/ref> As a result of the IBM acquisition, Cleversafe’s venture capital investors got back 10 times their original investments. Industry media outlet Built in Chicago pointed out that a “high-profile acquisition of that caliber is a rare feat for Chicago-based tech businesses, with few businesses setting as high a precedent.

References

{{Reflist Computer storage companies IBM acquisitions 2015 mergers and acquisitions Defunct software companies of the United States Technology companies established in 2004 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies 2004 establishments in Illinois