Introducing Cloudflyer
The World’s (Intelligent) Cloud to Cloud File Transfer Service
The Era of Cloud Adoption
Throughout the past decade organizations worldwide started moving a good percentage of their data infrastructure from on-premise to the cloud.
If you’re reading this you probably don’t need an explanation but cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over multiple locations, each location being a data center.
Today the cloud is a booming industry that provides new and improved solutions for critical problems. Most organizations have entrusted a handful of well known technology leaders that were early to the market with cloud computing offerings — including Amazon, Microsoft Azure and Google.
In early 2020 when Covid hit the world, cloud services were no longer just an efficiency play for CFOs and business owners in pursuit of improved services and long-term cost savings, they became an absolute must. Organizations of all sizes had to support remote working and dedicate more time and resources to moving more of their data infrastructure in the cloud.
So it’s no surprise that Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) has now become the largest area of growth for cloud providers. In 2020, the IaaS market was dominated by four providers: Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba. Industry metrics reflect that starting at around $12 billion in 2010, revenues are predicted to exceed $756 billion by 2026.
Problem #1 | High Rent but You Can’t Move
In order to take advantage of cloud technologies, companies must move their data from local storage servers to the cloud storage of their choosing. Amazon’s S3 storage product was the first widely used public cloud storage while Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform have been taking percentages of market share each year.
As more content is generated daily by companies worldwide, cloud storage needs (and costs) naturally grow as well. While AWS, Azure and Google have delivered amazing solutions, their costs are often the biggest customer complaint because they are 3–5 times more expensive than newer cloud storage products. For example AWS S3, Amazon’s most commonly used production storage, charges on average $0.189 per GB (or $19 TB) per month.
On top of a much higher per terabyte cost compared to others, they often charge a fee in order for users to access data in their network — commonly known as an egress fee. If a user wants to download a terabyte of their files from S3, the cost for that terabyte download will be on average $90!
Yes, $90 to download a terabyte of your own data. Imagine the total egress cost if you wanted to move 500 terabytes to another provider. It would be hard to justify taking that action.
If you’re already a customer, you’re well aware of this pain. These are costs that they get away with due to being early to the market and essentially locking you in. These are costs that newer cloud storage companies like Wasabi and Filebase don’t include. Both of these newer cloud competitors have base offerings starting at $5.99 TB — more than 3x less than S3. They also charge absolutely no egress fee.
Problem #2 | A Single Point of Data Failure
For many decision makers in charge of their company’s data, apprehension and fear arise when thinking about the loss of data or connectivity if they rely on a single cloud provider. It’s no secret that the largest cloud companies like AWS go down on occasion, making the data hosted in those data centers unavailable.
Most organizations have a data back up plan but if you’re currently in a single cloud storage you currently have 2 options:
1) Pay double for multiple copies of data hosted in separate regions
2) Send a copy to cold storage while still relying on the same cloud provider.
The primary problem is that either option relies on a single, and often higher priced, cloud provider. Data redundancy across separate cloud providers is simply the safest way to protect your data.
The Solution | Cloud Data Mobility + Redundancy + Incredible Savings
After years of working in the data infrastructure management space with dozens of technology partners and hundreds of organizations, my co-founder Michael Asadoorian and I started building software tools to help with cloud and file management.
During this time of vast technology change, our team consistently worked on solving a range of complex problems in the new hybrid cloud era. We spent a lot of time building hybrid and multi-cloud architectures for customers, which quickly led to the need to move data between cloud storage providers. We learned that it was both technically time consuming and cost prohibitive to move any large amounts of data from cloud to cloud. Everyone we talked with in the industry had the same problem.
So we decided to stop everything and go to work on singular focus —to build the most optimized and intelligent cloud to cloud transfer service in the world.
After several years of design, development and testing, we launched a beta product at the beginning of 2021. Throughout the year we moved dozens of petabytes between several clouds — testing, learning, listening to customer requests and making sure that all systems were secure, scalable and optimal. After replicating over a trillion objects between multiple clouds, we are now ready to introduce the solution to the market. We call it Cloudflyer.
Cloudflyer is an intelligent cloud to cloud file transfer service that unlocks the costs of egress and replicates an unlimited amount of objects at incredible speeds between cloud storage providers. There’s not another tool in the cloud storage market that delivers the power, ease of use and efficiencies.
There were 7 components that we focused on when designing Cloudflyer, considering the requirements and an overall value proposition for the cloud storage market:
- Data Security
- Object Management
- Network Optimization (Speed)
- Automation
- Scalability
- Cost
- Ease of Use
In my next post I will describe in detail the function and importance of each component. For now I’ll share some exciting feature descriptions:
Eliminating Egress Costs (you’re free to move out)
Cloudflyer will cover all of your S3 or Azure egress costs. We’ve built infrastructure that allows us to quickly connect to and move data between AWS, Azure, GCP, Wasabi and many more cloud providers. Migrate to lower cost storage and save 80% annually. We will cover the cost of your escape!
100% Data Verification. 100% of the time.
Cloudflyer scans all data with advanced AI tools. Trillions of objects have been moved across many cloud providers and never one object left behind. Realtime reporting on the dashboard.
Auto Replication Between Cloud Providers
With just a few clicks you can now automate data replication between your cloud storage buckets. Choose the source, destination and frequency — you’re good to go. Set it and forget with confidence.
Speeds up to 100 Gbps
We continuously and intelligently optimize speeds in every way. There is no other C2C transfer service or product available that comes close to matching our performance. Move a petabyte in a week.
Cloudflyer AI
Cloudflyer gathers data on 9 separate network components. Our software uses those data points to intelligently optimize performance and protection of all data across each network.
Any S3 Compatible API
Many cloud storage services rely on an S3 compatible API for simple and flexible connectivity. We support any cloud storage that offers S3 Compatible APIs for ingest.
Simple Dashboard
We’ve architected a very complex transfer engine while keeping user experience simplicity in mind for our customers and partners. Become a qualified partner and manage your own Cloudflyer account in minutes.
2022 Plans | Ready to go!
With this week’s launch we’re focused on building a strong sales channel with MSPs, Tech Partners and IT organizations that help manage their customers’ cloud infrastructures. We can help with individual migration projects or set your team up to manage a white label offering. We’ve made the platform easy to use and administer.
We will stay incredibly focused with adding new features and improving upon what we’ve built. Our product roadmap for 2022–23 is very exciting, although we will stay flexible with reacting to what the market needs most.
Today we can move any amount of data between AWS, Azure, GCP, Wasabi and any S3 Compatible cloud storage service. Bring us your petabytes with billions of objects. Cloudflyer will migrate your data with power and efficiency while covering your egress costs.
Please visit us at Cloudflyer.io and let us know how we can support your team’s plans.
Patrick Kennedy
Co-Founder | CEO
