Cubbit, an Italian scale-up that bills itself as the world’s first geo-distributed Cloud storage enabler, says it can offer companies full control of their data and ransomware protection while reducing costs and cutting emissions. It has 350+ European companies and partners, including Leonardo, a global defense and cybersecurity company.
More than 180 billion terabytes of data will be produced in 2025 and 75% of this will be created and processed at the edge. This explosive growth raises data orchestration complexity, cyber-attacks, sovereignty risks, and costs, says the company.
Cubbit says it overcomes these challenges by enabling organizations to create, in just minutes, their own geo-distributed storage-as-a-service that can slot into any infrastructure and policy framework – from hybrid cloud to the edge. It does this by encrypting data, splitting it into redundant chunks and distributing it across multiple locations or a geographical perimeter that customers choose. The result is a resilient, flexible, cost-efficient and greener cloud storage service that protects European data, says Stefano Onofri, the company’s co-founder and co-CEO.
“We are the first Cloud enabler to give full control back to the people who use the data rather than to the providers that built the infrastructure,” he says. The Company summarizes its approach with the slogan “Your Cloud. Your Rules. Anywhere.”
“When you choose Cubbit you become Cloud provider yourself and stop being dependent on a third party and being locked into a vendor,” says Onofri. “You can choose whatever hardware you want.”
Cubbit, stores data in private, geo-fenced networks that comply with ISO, GDPR and local laws and regulations. It is a partner of Gaia-X, an initiative to develop a federated secure data infrastructure for Europe, whereby data are shared, with users retaining control over their data access and usage, with the aim of achieving European digital sovereignty.
Cubbit’s software also offers companies protection against ransomware and downtime, says Onofri. Unlike traditional cloud storage, Cubbit encrypts, fragments, and replicates every piece of data across multiple locations, he says.
Another benefit of Cubbit’s geo-distributed approach is that it uses 25% to 50% less disk space and IT resources than traditional cloud storage, reducing customers’ Cloud carbon footprint, according to the company. “We do the same job protecting data as hyperscalers but do it more efficiently,” says Onofri. “Current Cloud providers typically use around three terabytes of data to protect one terabyte. We do it using up to 65% less.”
Cubbit says its service is also cheaper. It promises that companies will save 80% of what they pay to AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. Bare metal Cloud providers, dedicated servers and co-location is a cheaper approach and available from multiple providers, removing lock-in while distributing risk, says the company.
The company, a spin-out from the University of Bologna, was launched in 2016 by Onofri and three other university students Alessandro Cillario, Marco Moschettini and Lorenzo Posani. It has so far raised a total of $25 million. It already has a presence in German and French-speaking regions in Europe as well as the United Kingdom.
On September 11 Cubbit announced a business alliance partnership with Italy’s WIIT, one of the main European players in the Cloud computing space. Under the deal WIIT will become one of Cubbit’s customers, licensing its software to provide the benefits of distributed Cloud storage to companies and service providers based in German speaking regions of Europe (the so-called DACH region) who don’t have the resources to manage their own Cloud services but want an alternative to U.S. hyperscalers. The deal also enables enterprises and large service providers to create their own S3 Cloud storage in the DACH region. In this scenario data is stored within WIIT’s DACH-based data centers.
Cubbit will continue to directly target large corporates in areas like finance, healthcare and manufacturing that produce a lot of data and want to virtualize storage and manage it internally, Onofri says.
Competitors include established public and private Cloud providers. The downside of using Hyperscale Cloud providers is “they make the rules, and they are expensive,” he says. On premise private solutions from providers “sell software to manage your data for you but when it comes to a strategy for disaster recovery the only thing they can offer is cost increase because these systems were not made to be distributed,” says Onofri. “We offer the best of both worlds, giving you control over both your data and costs.”
