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Cleversafe: The Complete Story of the Distributed Data Pioneer

In One Sentence: Cleversafe pioneered revolutionary software for storing data across decentralized networks, culminating in a $1.4B acquisition by IBM to drive explosive growth of cloud object storage.

Let‘s dive into the full inside look at this visionary company.

Overview

First, here are some key facts on the history of data disruptor Cleversafe at a glance:

Founding Year 2004
Founder Chris Gladwin
Headquarters Chicago, IL
Key Offering dsNet distributed data storage software
Acquisition Price $1.4 billion to IBM (2015)
Total Funding $100+ million

Cleversafe made distributed data storage reliable at massive scale, ushering in the era of cloud object storage we see today. But behind its world-changing technology lies an origin story filled with licensing lawsuits, record-setting capacity growth, and dispersed data patents that we‘ll cover across this comprehensive guide.

Let‘s start at the visionary beginning.

Founding: Realizing the Future of Distributed Data

In the early 2000s, entrepreneur Chris Gladwin hit a scaling hurdle. His music startup MusicNow faced data storage limits as digital media boomed. Gladwin realized no current networked options allowed cost-efficient, endlessly expanding capacity.

A software expert, Gladwin invented clever math for chopping up and dispersing data across commodity servers in 2004. This became the genesis of Cleversafe and its dsNet software.

"I thought, ‘what if we could spread that data out?" said Gladwin on his big ‘aha‘ moment seeing storage constraints at MusicNow. That spark led to over 50 patents around dispersing data.

Powerhouse Leadership Team

Chris Gladwin Founder
John Morris CEO (2013-2015)
Jason Resch VP Engineering

Gladwin attracted software experts and investors awed by his data distribution vision. Let‘s focus first on the critical leadership supporting Cleversafe‘s rise.

John Morris took the CEO reins…

Conclusion: Paving Today‘s Data Superhighways

In the end, Cleversafe made decentralized data viable at planetary scale. As today‘s exabyte-hungry apps like AI and VR explode, we have the information dispersal pioneers at Cleversafe to thank for the resilient object storage foundations we‘re now building on. Their technology lives on enabling limitless expansion of cloud data infrastructures we now take for granted. When it comes to our soaring data universe, Cleversafe innovators charted the maps to the storage frontiers we‘re still exploring today.

I hope you enjoyed this comprehensive inside look at the distributed data trailblazers. Now you can ace any trivia night with your newfound Cleversafe expertise! What stuck out to you most about their influential history? I‘d love to hear your biggest takeaways on how they paved the way for our big data world.