Cloud storage company Wasabi and Cloud Constellation Corporation are teaming up on a new kind of data storage and security service. The two companies announced the partnership from Los Angeles and Boston on March 6, 2018.
The joint offering pairs Wasabi’s cloud storage with SpaceBelt, Cloud Constellation’s Data Security as a Service. Together they let enterprises sidestep the cyber risks of ground-based global networks, because data travels and rests on a network in space instead.
SpaceBelt is a patented system. It uses a constellation of 12 satellites in low earth orbit, and those satellites are linked by a redundant, self-healing laser photonic ring that keeps the service available. Geosynchronous satellites then connect the network to secure access points at Wasabi data centers and at customer sites.
On the ground, Wasabi supplies the storage. Its service works with the Amazon S3 interface and skips complex storage tiers. Instead, it charges a flat $0.0039 per gigabyte per month, with a minimum of 1 TB. Wasabi also offers immutable buckets, where stored data cannot be erased or changed. That protects customers from accidental deletion, software bugs, hackers and malware.
Wasabi chief executive David Friend said the company was excited to work on SpaceBelt and honored to be chosen as a strategic partner. Dennis R. Gatens, vice president of SpaceBelt channel management and marketing, said a data breach can do damage that insurance cannot repair. Customers can use Wasabi’s low-cost storage, he added, while SpaceBelt protects the data where cyber risk matters most.
The companies expect chief information officers and security chiefs to fold the combined service into their cybersecurity plans.
Wasabi is privately held and based in Boston. David Friend and Jeff Flowers, who earlier co-founded Carbonite, started the company. Wasabi says its storage costs about 80% less than Amazon S3 and runs six times faster. Cloud Constellation, by contrast, focuses on space-based data centers for service providers, enterprises and governments.