Cloud Constellation SpaceBelt - Out Of This World Cloud Data Centers?

Cloud Constellation SpaceBelt – Out Of This World Cloud Data Centers?

A new startup called Cloud Constellation (aka SpaceBelt) has announced and proposes converge space terrestrial satellite technology with IT information and cloud related data infrastructure technologies including NVM (e.g. SSD) and storage class memory (SCM). While announcing their Series A funding and proposed value proposition (below), Cloud Constellation did not say how much funding, who the investors are, or management team leading to some, well, rather cloud information.

Cloud Constellation’s SpaceBelt transforms cybersecurity for enterprise and government operations moving high-value data around the world by:

insulating it completely from the Internet and terrestrial leased lines
liberating it from cyberattacks and surreptitious activities
protecting it from natural disasters and force majeure events
addressing all jurisdictional complexities and constraints
avoiding risks of violating privacy regulations

Truly secure data transfer: Enterprises and governments will finally be enabled to bypass use of leaky networks and compromised servers interconnecting their sites around the world.

New option for cloud service providers: The service will be a key market differentiator for cloud service providers to offer a transformative, ultra-high degree of network security to clients reliant on moving sensitive, mission-critical data around the world each day.

What is SpaceBelt Cloud Constellation?

From their website www.cloudconstellation.com you will see following.

www.cloudconstellation.com

Keeping in mind that today is April 1st which means April Fools day 2016, my motto for the day is trust yet verify. So just for fun, check out this new company that I had a briefing with earlier this week that also announced their Series A funding earlier in March 2016.

The question you have to ask yourself today is if this is an out of this world April Fools prank, an out of this world idea that will eclipse current cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, IBM Softlayer, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace among others?

Or, will SpaceBelt go the way of earlier cloud high flyers HP Cloud, Nirvanix among others.

Btw, keep in mind that only you can prevent cloud data loss, however cloud and virtual data availability is also a shared responsibility.

Some Questions and Things To Ponder

Is this an April Fools Joke?
How much Non Volatile Memory (NVM) such as NAND, 3D Nand, 3D XPoint or other Storage Class Memory (SCM) can be physically placed on each bird (e.g. Satellite)
What will the solar panels look like to power the birds, plus battery’s for heating and cooling the NVM (contrary to popular myth, NVMs do get warm if not hot)
What is the availability, accessibility and durability model, how will data be replicated, mirrored or an out of this world LRC/Erasure Code Advanced Parity model be used?
How will the storage be accessed, what will the end-points look like, iSCSI, NDB, FUSE, NFS, CIFS, HDFS, Torrent, JSON, ODBC, REST/HTTP, FTP or something else?
Security will be a concern as well as geo placement, after all, its one thing to move data across some borders, how about if the data is hundreds of miles above those borders?
Cost will be an interesting model to follow, as well as competitors from SpaceX, Amazon, Boeing, GE, NSA, Google, Facebook or others emerge?
What will the uplink and download speeds be, not to mention latency of moving and accessing data from the satellites. For those who have DirectTV or other terrestrial service you know the pros and cons associated with that. Speaking of which, perhaps you have experienced a thunder-storm with DirecTV or Dish, or perhaps a cloud storm due to a cloud provider service or site failure, think about what happens to your cloud data if the satellite dish is disrupted during an upload or download.
I also wonder how the various industry trade groups will wrap their head around this one, what kind of new standards, initiatives and out of this world marketing promotions will we see or hear about? You know that some creative marketer will declare surface clouds as dead, just saying.

Where To Learn More

www.cloudconstelation.com
www.spacebelt.com
Cloud Conversations: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
S3motion Buckets Containers Objects AWS S3 Cloud and EMCcode
Using Microsoft Azure for cloud storage
Cloud storage considerations – Using Microsoft Azure for cloud storage
Some August 2015 Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure Cloud Updates
www.objectstoragecenter.com

What This All Means

The folks over at cloud constellation say their space belt made up of a constellation (e.g. in orbit cluster) of satellites will be circling the globe around 2019. I wonder if they will be ready to do a proof of concept (poc) technology demonstrator of their IP using TCP based networking, server, storage I/O protocols leveraging a hot air balloon or weather balloon near term, if not, would be a great marketing ploy.

If nothing else, putting their data infrastructure technology on a hot air balloon could be a fun marketing ploy to say their cloud rises above the hot air of other cloud marketing. Or if they do a POC using a weather balloon, they could show and say their cloud rises above traditional cloud storms, oh the fun…

Check out Cloud Constellation and their Spacebelt, see for yourself and then you decide what is going on!

Remember, its April Fools day today, trust, yet verify.

What say you, is this an April Fools Joke or the next big thing?

Ok, nuff said (for now), time to listen to Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon ;)

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

greg