Hightail IOpts for Cleversafe Object-Based Storage

Cleversafe Inc. announced that Hightail Inc. (formerly YouSendIt), a file-sharing service, selected its Dispersed Storage Network (dsNet) platform to support its private cloud environment, enabling the service provider to offer customers hyperscale storage.

The partnership allows Hightail to store its customers’ large and growing unstructured data files of images, videos and more.

With more than 45 million professionals across 193 countries using Hightail to share and control files remotely, Hightail found that its customer data was growing by more than a petabyte/month. When its former storage system could no longer meet the company’s hyperscale storage needs without increasing in price, the company sought out an object-based storage provider that could scale to meet customer data demand.

“Cleversafe has helped Hightail remove cost from the equation and treat storage as if it was free. We don’t want to participate in the race to the bottom of the pricing war and by treating storage as a commodity, we can focus on truly differentiated product features,” said Rob Ruth, VP of IT operations, Hightail. “We’re effectively increasing our storage footprint while decreasing budget and administrative overhead. The solution’s ease of use allows us to operate without a dedicated storage team, making Cleversafe four to five times less expensive than our previous provider.“

In addition to economics and the ability to scale, Cleversafe’s security and encryption capabilities are critical to Hightail and its customers – particularly to those in the financial, government and retail sectors that must meet strict data security standards and regulations, such as PCI compliance. Not only is Cleversafe’s solution inherently more secure than legacy storage systems that make full copies of information available in multiple locations, but also services like encryption, virus scanning and more no longer need to be managed separately as a result of the solution.

Hightail is also seeing efficiencies across the board. According to Ruth, his team spends half the time previously spent on administrative storage tasks. He also estimates that the company has reduced power consumption by more than 30% with Cleversafe.

“98% of Fortune 500 companies rely on Hightail and we’re honored that Hightail relies on Cleversafe to grow with those customers and keep their ever-expanding data safe,” said Russ Kennedy, SVP of product strategy and customer solutions, Cleversafe. “We believe they are already seeing quantifiable results for their customers and we’re looking forward to expanding our partnership with Hightail.“