3240: How Storadera Is Simplifying S3-Compatible Cloud Storage

[00:00:04] What if cloud storage wasn't complicated, opaque or overpriced? Well, in today's episode of the Tech Talks Daily podcast, I'm joined by the founder of a company called Storadera. And they're one of the standout companies I had the pleasure of meeting at the IT Press Tour in London. Big thank you to Philippe and Celine for looking after me at that event and anybody interested in the tour.

[00:00:31] I would strongly urge that you check them out. You can find out more information at itpresstour.net. But my guest today, he's based in Estonia and he's going to talk about how they're reshaping how we think about S3-Compatible Cloud Storage. And yeah, we're going to strip out some of the complexity and replace it with simplicity, transparency and a whole lot of innovation.

[00:00:57] His name is Tommy. He's going to be sharing the story behind Storadera's hyper-converged approach, how they're tackling everything from small file performance to data sovereignty, and why Estonia is home to more unicorns than you'd expect for a small country of just 1.3 million, and why it's punching well above its weight in the tech scene.

[00:01:20] So if you're curious about the future of cloud infrastructure or just want to know more about what makes Estonia such a fertile ground for successful tech founders, you've come to the right place. But enough from me. Time for me to officially introduce you to Tommy now. So a massive warm welcome to the show. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:01:47] Hi, everybody. Thank you, Neil, for inviting me. I'm Tommy Gunniston. Hello. And as I understand, we're later going to talk about my company. So I started with history. So I am engineer by heart and by trade, software engineer. And I have worked in these amazing companies like Skype, that is it is going to be shut down next month. I have worked in a bolt, the competitor for Uber.

[00:02:16] And there I was close to beginning. And it was amazing to see how it grew and how it changed and still stay true to the cause. And yes, I maybe should have added in the beginning. I'm from Estonia. And these nice companies are founded in Estonia as well.

[00:02:39] Well, it's a pleasure to have you join me. Of course, we met at the IT press tour recently. I've spent some time in Estonia as well. I did interview Sten Tamkiwi. Do you know him at all? Yes, too. Yeah, he was at… He was famous. Yeah, he was in Skype and also spent a little time in the Bolt head office there in Estonia. A huge tech scene, isn't it?

[00:03:03] Yes. So I think Skype was the starter of it. And it gave a possibility for many people like financial and also like the skill set to start new things. And then it kind of exploded.

[00:03:20] And of course, we're not here to talk about all the other great companies in Estonia. We're here to talk about Stordata today. Oh, sorry. Stordara today, which is based in Estonia and offers cloud storage that is simple, secure, affordable, and most importantly, S3 compatible. But for people that are hearing about you for the first time, can you just tell everyone listening a little more about the company, the problems that you've set out to solve and what makes you different from other solutions out there?

[00:03:51] Yes, thank you. So the initial goal as an engineer, I set the goal to research. Is it possible to offer this kind of storage at reasonable prices, but without making compromises? Because, you know, usually like if you like go super, you have to like be less reliable and maybe less secure and so on.

[00:04:15] So I asked as an engineer, like would this be possible to not make compromises, but still make it a lot more affordable than AWS offered at the time and at this time as well? So to achieve this, we developed total new storage software that's S3 compatible, but real magic happens behind this compatibility layer.

[00:04:40] So we work only on hard disks. We don't require SSDs, but now we have reached the point that like many storage softwares have problems with small files. It reduces performance, but for us, we can write any amount of small files now.

[00:04:58] So this sounds a bit like very specific, but it just illustrates that we are going, we're making really much effort to achieve our initial goal. And for everyone listening, can you tell them a little bit more about your hyper-converged setup and ultimately the ROI on that, what that means for businesses? Because that was something that stood out in your presentation that I saw a few days ago.

[00:05:25] Yeah. So one of the like side goals when developing this software was to replace any hardware that's possible with software. And we have, our physical setup is really simple. We have servers that are connected to J-pods that are big boxes of disks. And all our software runs on all servers. So there are no separate gateways. There are no load parameters.

[00:05:49] We just route the traffic from one server to other if we need to. And every server is also connected to internet. So we are accepting files as parallel as possible. No bottlenecks, no extra costs. And simpler things tend to work more reliably as well. So this is also a way that we keep our internal costs down and we can pass this great pricing to our customers.

[00:06:17] And I suspect for many business leaders listening, they have so many options in a crowded market. So the question I have to ask is why are they choosing? Why are so many choosing Storadero? What is it that they're coming to you for here? And when they are, as I said, it's a crowded market. It must be incredibly tough sometimes. But why are they choosing you?

[00:06:39] Yes, there are obviously quite many options like this big three, AWS Azure, Google. There are smaller, like more specialized storage providers. So we are chosen mostly because of basically the simpler interface and pricing. We don't have any extra fees on usage. Like basically everybody else has some hidden or not hidden extra fees.

[00:07:07] That's actually complex to understand even how much it's going to be costing for you. And also we work with resell partners. So we offer out of the box. Our resell partner can manage their customers on our platform and get the usage and billing information out of it. And how many customers do you have and where are they located? Are they all based across Europe or around the world?

[00:07:36] What kind of coverage do you have here? Yeah, so we have two data centers. So this is important for this. We have two data centers in Netherlands and in Estonia at the moment. And a little less than like less than half of our customers are from Estonia. More than half are outside of Estonia. So more prominent being Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Netherlands, Sweden. So we have from Brasilia.

[00:08:05] And like actually quite many countries are presented. But it's important that typically still companies want storage to be closed. And like for some use cases, it's like strategically a bit further away. And some cases they want to be closed, just protecting against, let's say, data loss in their own data center or something like that.

[00:08:30] And something that I think we're seeing around the world at the moment, we're seeing an increase in global conflict. And I think many nations are beginning to focus on data sovereignty and data residency. And I think with the tariffs and the trade wars coming out of the US at the moment, the US might maybe looking at keeping their data within the US. And equally, I would expect Europe to follow suit and think, well, we need to keep our data stored in Europe.

[00:08:59] But are you seeing any trends around this? And do you sense any opportunities from this? Obviously, I do sense the opportunities. I see lots of talk in the internet about getting your data back to safety from big US companies. Of course, these like bigger enterprise, they move slower.

[00:09:20] But I think this is a really important topic because there are actually not too many companies working in like providing something novel in storage from Europe. There are of course, but there are also many US companies like software that's paid for or services.

[00:09:42] And I think it is really important that we build up our muscle to offer all IT services for Europe, from Europe. And also, actually, I see that Canada now starts looking more towards Europe than US and also India, even before the tariffs and so on. Actually, most more keen to Europe and not US so much.

[00:10:09] It does feel like there is going to be a lot of changes there, a lot of opportunities for companies like you in the industry that you're in. And what's next for you? Is there anything on your roadmap? Like, I don't know, AI features or anything you can share around that road ahead that you're taking? Yeah, so there are two sides.

[00:10:28] Basically, it's one is the, like, how we improve our software and how we manage our servers just to keep us frugal and keep our, basically, industry best price. And they're still offering, I hope, it's the best service. And for that, yes, we, at the moment, we don't use any AI in our software, but in our roadmap, we actually have some plans to optimize reading from the disk and deleting.

[00:10:57] Because, you know, we use these spinning hard disks that are very slow, actually, for random IEO. But currently, we already optimize the writing part, so this is not possible to overload us with main writes. But reading is actually, we go against physics laws, and we hope with AI we can defeat it. So we can make reading and deleting super optimized as well.

[00:11:25] So this is, again, something that will slow our internal costs. Well, as I said at the very beginning of our episode, I did spend a little bit of time in Estonia. And I also, I think it was Tavi Kocha and Karioli Jabbatical, I think it was, interviewed so many great startups. And obviously, you've got the digital nation thing going on there as well, and the first digital society.

[00:11:53] And Estonia has been the birthplace of 10 unicorns, which is especially impressive, considering a population of 1.37 million. So tell me more about that tech startup scene in Estonia, as you see it, and why it is so vibrant. What's the secret there? So for me, it seems normal because I'm here, but actually people tend to help each other.

[00:12:18] Like if you have, like when I started, when I had some questions for how to pin the company or anything. So it is quite okay to just choose a random CEO or some very experienced person from other startup and write to them and ask, like, hey, you don't know me, but I have this question. Could we have a call? And like 50-50, like if they have time, they will do it.

[00:12:48] So this is this kind of friendliness. Yeah, and I did come across quite a few startup meetings throughout the week in a number of places. There's a real feeling of that community atmosphere around. It was Tarlin that I spent some time in there. And is that ongoing? Is that getting stronger, that startup scene that you're seeing? Yeah, I don't know how, like, what's the direction?

[00:13:16] So it is there, but also like it actually seems maybe more fancy than it is because it is of course very hard to start and still have to deliver your own results and so on. But there is support if you seek for it and advice as well. So this is an example. So actually people can, young people can imagine themselves to achieve something great.

[00:13:46] This is as well, very important. Love that. And for anybody listening, want to find out more information about you, your work, Storadero, everything that we talked about today, maybe want to reach out to you, just find out more information. Where would you like to point everyone listening? So about Storadero, you go to Storadero.com. It's as simple as that. And if you make any mistakes spelling it, I guess Google will correct you.

[00:14:14] And you can reach out to me in LinkedIn, for example, Mechanista. I usually try to respond. Maybe if I add one more thing, if I may, we actually put on our webpage a waitlist for new regions. So this is something. So we're on two locations at the moment, Netherlands and Estonia. And we're planning to open quite many new countries, basically. And we go by the demand.

[00:14:43] So if you want to see this in your country as a company, well, everybody is welcome. But typical companies have a bit more data. So you can sign up and show your interest. So it may come sooner to you. Awesome. Well, I will add links to everything you mentioned there. And I will urge anybody listening that is interested to not only check those links out, but also reach out to your good self and send you a message.

[00:15:11] Because I know how incredibly friendly and welcoming you are. Having met you at the IT press tour. And I think it was a, we shared a whiskey as well. So maybe a conversation in person with a whiskey. You are officially my Estonian guy now. So next time I'm in town, we will meet up and carry on this conversation. I'd love to stay in touch and see how your work continues to evolve. But more than anything, just thank you for sitting down with me again today. Really appreciate your time.

[00:15:39] Thank you for your kind words. And it was really nice to meet you in person as well. And if you're in town, let me know. So a big thank you to Tommy for joining me and offering a glimpse into both the future of cloud storage and also the thriving tech culture coming out of Estonia. And I think their commitment to simplicity and performance in a world dominated by complexity. I think what Tommy shared there, I think that's something tech leaders from all over the world can learn from.

[00:16:09] And if today's conversation piqued your interest, I also strongly recommend that you check out the IT press tour. You can reach it at itpresstours.net. An incredible opportunity for me to meet some of the most forward thinking minds in tech, discover emerging trends firsthand and explore the innovation that's driving IT across the globe.

[00:16:33] So if you'd like to get your company in front of, I don't know, 15 tech journalists, that might be something worth checking out. But for our conversation today, what did you think? Could a simpler, fairer approach to cloud storage give the giants a run for their money?

[00:16:51] Especially at a time where we are talking more and more about data residency, data sovereignty, the importance of nations or regions keeping that data under control. So many big talking points here. So as always, techblogwriteroutlook.com, LinkedIn X, Instagram, just at Neil C Hughes. Please join the conversation. It is a dialogue, not a monologue. And I always encourage different voices from around the world on this show. That is what we do.

[00:17:21] But that is it for today. So I will catch you in the next episode tomorrow morning and speak with you all then. Well, bye for now. God bless. Amen.