I’ve been ordering parts for a NAS/node, and I’ve been thinking about Storj future. Storj’s only incentive seems to be that it is decentralized, it can’t beat any other cloud storage provider in price/gb or speed. I was thinking about suggesting tiers of storage, similar to AWS has glacier, but I’m not sure that is a positive for node providers. If we can’t beat prices or have a different appeal to the average user/business, I’m not sure Storj will ever be anything but a niche storage provider. I just wanted to open up a discussion about 1) why I’m wrong and what Storj does better for the average Joe(or Sara) or your average company or 2) what Storj can change to increase appeal.
Hey @itisyeetimetoday,
If you have a look at the Tardigrade.io homepage it explains that it’s already cheaper than the equivalent storage types for AWS etc…
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Hi @itsyeetimetoday,
Great post – I want answer your comments/concerns piece-by-piece here:
Storj’s only incentive seems to be that it is decentralized, it can’t beat any other cloud storage provider in price/gb or speed. I was thinking about suggesting tiers of storage, similar to AWS has glacier, but I’m not sure that is a positive for node providers.
Tardigrade is a hot object storage service are currently ~half the price of AWS, GCP, Azure.
Rather than compete with cold-storage options like Glacier (which low margins for SNOs) we are looking to compete on direct Object Storage Cases where we have a unique and differentiated advantage.
- Why I’m wrong and what Storj does better for the average Joe(or Sara) or your average company
One such use case is database snapshots for enterprise platforms like Pulsar, Influx, Mongo, etc. In enterprise settings, databases are backed up frequently – and need to be readily available (ie if a database blows up, and you need to rehydrate it - it can’t be in cold storage).
Tardigrade is uniquely positioned here – as the snapshot is readily available, globally – without the need for 4x+ replication overhead costs across availability zones (ie US-East, US-West, Europe, Asia, etc.). In this scenario we can be up to 1/8 the cost for enterprises.
This is one of many use cases being proved out today! Check out this webinar for Data Science Central where John Gleeson discusses InfluxDB backups (posted by Kirk Borne of Booze-Allen): https://twitter.com/KirkDBorne/status/1245056601746178048?s=20.
Stay tuned for some customers from our initial set of open source partners.
- What Storj can change to increase appeal.
This is a great question! We are working at creating more Connector use cases to showcase Tardigrade’s unique capabilities and create sustainable economic opportunities for open-source.
For an overview of our connector program check out: https://storj.io/blog/2020/03/building-tardigrade-connectors/
Additional use cases that we are seeing include using storj as the object store for file management tools within applications (like Nextcloud), and eventually with mobile apps via our libuplink integration for iOS, Java, Xamarin (one early Android example here: GitHub - fullsend-solutions/Tardigrade-Android: A proof of concept app for Tardigrade- the world's first S3-compatible SLA-backed decentralized cloud storage solution.).
Another important one is direct NAS backups, accomplished via simple GUI apps in appstores for leading providers.
Additional early use cases described here: https://storj.io/blog/2020/02/use-cases-for-the-decentralized-cloud/
I would also love to hear your feedback around what you would find useful!
Thanks,
kevin@storj.io
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Thanks! I have another question though. I’m posting on a separate thread since it is quite different and unrelated.
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The documentation is available here: Implementing Nextcloud Using Storj - Storj Docs
I also summerized how to set up tardigrade with nextcloud external storage here: How to add Storj to Nextcloud "as external storages"? - #21 by Andisers
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