Bitcasa Introduces Infinite Disk Space in the Internet Cloud

Bitcasa Promises customers to sell unlimited storage space in its data centre. The Have used Extra Ordinary “Clever Compression Algorithms”.

Although hard drives are steadily increasing, but more and more multimedia data to ensure that their capacity to run out again. A possible solution to the problem now wants the American start-up Bitcasa introduce: The company promises customers an infinite amount of space in their server in the Internet cloud.

“Look at this window,” says co-founder Tony Bitcasa Gauda, ??”shows there are 18 terabytes available. That is why so few, because the file manager is no greater numbers. Actually, there would have to” infinity “position.”

Bitcasa is currently in a limited beta – users who already participate must pay $ 10 a month for unlimited storage. The software currently runs on Apple computers, a Windows version is in development but as well as versions for smartphones and tablets. “The user will have plenty of space for their data and have access from anywhere,” says Gauda. “With Bitcasa need not ever have to buy a new hard drive.”

The space on the remote server cloud is, spending by the software as locally – the Bitcasa driver programs provide this illusion. If the user then opens a window of his Finder or Windows Explorer, it looks as if there were any locally stored files and folders.

Once a file from the Bitcasa cloud is open, it will be downloaded as quickly as possible. “The network is now good enough that it can be hard to drive,” says Gauda. Tests the company had shown that it users with a decent broadband connection does not stand out more, whether they saw a movie streamed from the net or play him from the local hard disk.

These are indeed some tricks Bitcasa served. This ensures all the time that the latest files available locally, so that the impact of link failures or network problems are as small as possible. “We analyze how data is used. We look at how old a file when it was last used. Assuming we decide what ends up in the cloud. But you can also select specific folders, which then always local be saved. ” Vacation photos, which are several years old, would then sit for example, by default on the server Bitcasa. Last week a more local scale, however document belongs to the hard disk.

No matter how good the prediction algorithm works – there will always be files that need to be downloaded from the cloud, before they can be used.Because hardly anyone has a perfect internet connection, Bitcasa should therefore not always run without problems. And if a computer is offline, is possible with certain files do not have access.

The offer of an “infinite” virtual hard disk requires Bitcasa also hold a lot of space in its data center. This special compression algorithms are used to minimize the demand. If it is a file that another user Bitcasa also holds, it is stored only once – a popular piece of music, for example. This saves the service a lot of space.

Bitcasa is not the only memory of the service kind of work. Dropbox , a now highly popular synchronization service, uses the same principle, but is not quite as much as the start-up competitor. There, the user must determine its own folder, which is constantly compared with the cloud – and also on other computers or smart phones and tablets. The company offers 2 gigabytes of free storage, 50 gigabytes costs $ 10 per month.Bitcasa will now offer its “infinite” rate for the same price. So that the bears in the long run, but probably still have her premium services that cost more, for some companies. Otherwise, the infinite memory for the company rapidly expensive: cloud backup services like Mozy now to avoid those options because they do not pay off.

Venture capital investor Roelhof Botha of Sequoia Capital, who has seen the demonstration Bitcasa, wonders also how the transfer costs would be covered. “It would be fairly expensive to transport as much data and stream.”

Angel investor Ron Conway believes that Bitcasa would first have to prevail against Dropbox: The company is now trading at a market value of one billion dollars. Interestingly, the technique of the young competitor, but was mistaken: “The video streaming seems to be something that other services can not.”

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Posted by Ibrahim on October 8, 2011. Filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.