Interview: Richard Czech, chief revenue officer at Cubbit.

1.      What does Cubbit offer?

Cubbit offers a geographically-distributed S3 cloud storage solution, enabling its clients and partners to securely store their data, including backups, media files, and more, while maintaining a data durability of eleven nines (i.e., 99.999999999%). This innovative architecture facilitates the use of multiple data centres for each S3 bucket, eliminating the dependency on a single data centre location. This design allows customers to establish a robust S3 infrastructure distributed across different geographical locations, taking advantage of top-tier storage technologies without confining data to one data centre location. This significantly enhances both the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO), ensuring that even the loss of a data centre location would not hinder the data restoration process or impact the data. Cubbit is also certified under ISO 9001 and ISO 27001, demonstrating our commitment to quality management and information security.

2. What was the inspiration behind Cubbit?

Cubbit draws its inspiration from the collective behaviour of bees, which work together in a swarm-like fashion to create a highly robust and resilient system, much like a cooperative model with storage contributors. A cornerstone of Cubbit’s foundation is the desire to create energy-efficient storage systems, reflecting a profound commitment to green technology.

Now, Cubbit empowers its partners and customers to construct cloud storage systems that are significantly more energy-efficient than traditional centralised cloud storage models.

3. What sort of partners are you looking for? 

Cubbit is actively seeking to establish strategic partnerships with MSPs and VARs who recognise the importance of addressing the ever-increasing customer concerns surrounding data sovereignty linked to S3 cloud storage.

With a pioneering technological approach, Cubbit differentiates with its distributed S3 storage model, which spans between three to dozens of cities within each country. This is a particularly significant feature in light of increasing regulations and legislation that are driving businesses to seek more secure and controlled data storage solutions enforced by sovereignty.

In today’s increasingly interconnected digital environment, businesses of all sizes – from SMBs to large enterprises – have become highly adept at employing centralised cloud storage and S3 for data backup and storage purposes. However, the introduction of legislation such as the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, commonly known as the Cloud Act, has raised legitimate concerns. The act has significant implications on data privacy, as it potentially grants U.S. law enforcement agencies the ability to access data stored overseas. For companies with a global footprint, this presents a real risk to data sovereignty, causing them to re-evaluate their data storage and management strategies.

This is where Cubbit’s unique value proposition becomes incredibly relevant. With a few straightforward steps, customers can regain the control they seek and enhance the management of their S3 data. This means MSPs and hosting providers can quickly and effectively integrate Cubbit into their offerings, creating their own S3 services in a matter of minutes. In doing so, these partners can effectively respond to legislative changes, address their clients’ data sovereignty concerns, and importantly, yield better returns on their infrastructure investments. The potential in Cubbit’s innovative solution is truly significant for businesses navigating the complex regulatory landscape of cloud data storage.

4. What is the new channel partner programme?

Within the framework of a typical partner programme that includes training and certification, sales and marketing support, technical support, and financial incentives, Cubbit takes it a step further by empowering partners to create new offerings, such as ‘DS3 Data Sovereignty-as-a-Service’. This enables partners to propose a range of incremental services that directly address key customer concerns. With the rise in cyber attacks such as ransomware, and increasingly stringent regulations and compliance requirements, this service is a timely, unique and valuable addition to the partner programme.

Cubbit provides partners with sophisticated dashboard and monitoring tools, which they can utilise to customise dedicated cloud storage services for their clients. These services can take into account pre-existing infrastructure, specific anti-ransomware protection measures, and primary objectives for RTO or RPO in disaster recovery plans.

The versatility of Cubbit’s solution allows it to scale capacity and performance based on each customer’s demand while keeping costs minimal. Moreover, it helps businesses comply with emerging regulations aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of their cloud infrastructures.

5. How does it benefit MSPs with SMB customers?

Cubbit’s channel partner programme and technology offer numerous advantages for MSPs working with SMB customers.

• Cost-effectiveness: Cubbit’s distributed storage model not only optimises resource use but also significantly cuts down costs for Managed Service Providers (MSPs). It offers a highly cost-effective approach with no egress fees, no charges for deleted storage, and no costs for S3 API calls.
• Ease of Integration: Cubbit’s solution is compatible with the S3 interface, widely used in the industry, making it easy to integrate into existing backup or storage systems and services.
• Data Sovereignty: With the growing concerns over data privacy and sovereignty, Cubbit’s solution enables MSPs to offer SMB customers a geographically-distributed storage solution, enhancing data control and addressing regulatory compliance issues.
• Resilience and Redundancy: Cubbit’s distributed architecture, with storage spread across at least three cities within a country, ensures high resilience and redundancy, minimising data loss risks.
• Environmental Sustainability: Cubbit’s technology is designed to use less energy compared to traditional cloud storage, aligning with the company’s global sustainability goals, which can be a significant selling point for SMB customers.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Cubbit can scale capacity and performance on demand, enabling MSPs to quickly adjust to changing client needs. In addition, with Cubbit’s advanced dashboard management, MSPs can easily blend on-premises, edge, and private or public cloud storage resources to meet specific customer requirements.
• Potential New Revenue Streams: By offering Cubbit’s solutions, MSPs can offer a range of incremental services such as customised cloud storage services or ‘S3 Data Sovereignty-as-a-Service’. This can generate new revenue streams, enhancing these MSPs’ business profitability.

In essence, MSPs can leverage Cubbit’s innovative and flexible cloud storage solution to provide SMB customers with a secure, cost-effective, and sustainable data storage solution, potentially expanding their service portfolios and driving business growth.

6. How will Cubbit support partners?

Cubbit will support its partners in a variety of ways, with its commitment to providing dedicated pre-sales and post-sales resources in each country our technology is available in. In addition to a localised sales team, the support will be structured as follows:

• Dedicated Account Management: each partner will be assigned a dedicated account manager who will serve as the main point of contact and be responsible for understanding the partner’s specific needs and requirements, and coordinating with other Cubbit teams to ensure the partner receives the necessary support.
• Pre-sales Support: Cubbit’s pre-sales team provides assistance in understanding the customer’s needs, crafting tailored solutions, preparing quotations, and addressing any technical queries that the partner or customer may have. This support can also include conducting product demonstrations, customer meetings, or joint marketing initiatives.
• Post-sales Support: Following the sale, Cubbit will provide ongoing technical support to help the partner with the implementation, system optimisation, and troubleshooting. This support can also extend to updates, or new feature rollouts.
• Training and Education: Cubbit provides regular training and certification programmes for partners via our dedicated Partner Portal launching in September. This will ensure that partners are kept up-to-date with Cubbit’s latest product features, technology advancements, and best practices.
• Marketing and Sales Enablement: Cubbit offers marketing collateral, sales tools, and promotional materials to help partners market Cubbit’s products effectively. This can also involve co-branding or co-marketing initiatives to jointly promote the partnership and solutions.
• Feedback Loop: Cubbit maintains a strong feedback loop with its partners, involving them in the product development process, taking their input on new features or improvements, and providing early access to new updates.

Through these measures, Cubbit provides a robust support framework for its partners, ensuring they have the necessary resources, knowledge, and tools to successfully sell and implement Cubbit’s solutions.

7. What makes Cubbit different from competitive offerings?

Cubbit’s approach to distributed cloud storage stands out from the competition thanks to several distinctive features and principles:

• Data Sovereignty: Unlike many cloud storage providers, Cubbit’s model allows data to be stored across multiple geographic locations – a minimum of three cities – in a single country. This addresses key data sovereignty concerns, helping businesses maintain control over their data and adhere to regulatory requirements.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Cubbit’s distributed storage model not only optimises resource use but also significantly cuts down costs for Managed Service Providers (MSPs). It offers a highly cost-effective approach with no egress fees, no charges for deleted storage, and no costs for S3 API calls.
• Resilience and Security: Cubbit’s distributed architecture provides superior resilience, with hyper data redundancy built into the system with its distributed storage model. This minimises the risk of data loss and ensures high availability. Furthermore, encryption at rest and in transit ensures that the stored data is secure.
• Sustainability: Cubbit’s technology is designed to consume significantly less energy compared to traditional cloud storage. This not only reduces costs but also aligns with sustainability goals, which is an increasingly important consideration for many businesses.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Cubbit can scale capacity and performance based on demand, providing a flexible solution that can grow with the needs of a business.
• Ease of Integration: Cubbit’s solutions are compatible with the widely-used S3 interface, which makes integration into existing systems and services straightforward.
• Partner-Centric Approach: With a dedicated and 100% indirect sales model, channel support system for partners, including localised sales teams and region-specific pre- and post-sales resources, Cubbit ensures partners have all the necessary tools and the assistance they require to succeed.

In sum, Cubbit’s unique blend of data sovereignty, cost-effectiveness, resilience, sustainability, scalability, ease of integration, and partner-centric approach sets it apart in the competitive cloud storage market.

8. What does the future hold for Cubbit?

Cubbit’s future is extremely exciting, thanks to its unique distributed storage model and data sovereignty features and the positive reaction they are getting from the industry, with more than 150 corporates already using the service. Anticipated expansion plans include a broader partnership network, geographical reach, and continual technology advancements to meet evolving business needs. Cubbit’s commitment to sustainability and regulatory compliance is likely to position the company as an increasingly attractive choice in the cloud storage market. Finally, as Cubbit continues to disrupt traditional cloud storage, it will gain further market recognition, leading to additional opportunities for growth, fundings, and collaboration.