Dominik Grolimund
Wuala - A Distributed (P2P) Storage System

Monday, November 9, 2009
Building 3 Auditorium - 11:00 AM
(Coffee at 10:30 AM)

Wuala is an innovative, distributed online storage that allows users to securely store, back up, and access ?les from anywhere, and share ?les easily with family, friends, and co-workers. Wuala is based on a revolutionary distributed grid technology that was researched at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich). Users begin with 1GB of storage but can expand as they like by trading idle disk space or by buying additional online storage. All files get encrypted before they leave the user's computer and the user chooses who gets access to which folder. In March 2009, Wuala was acquired by the LaCie, the French-American provider of external storage solutions, to combine hardware (NAS) and software. In this tech talk, I'll explain the technology behind Wuala and our vision of a "cloud of devices" for the future.

Dominik Grolimund, co-founder and CEO of Wuala (www.wuala.com), Swiss, is 29 years old and studied computer science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). In 1998, he founded his first software company, Caleido (www.caleido.com), which was very successful. In 2004, he started research and development on Wuala, a novel grid-based online storage, at ETH Zurich. After 4 years of development, they successfully launched Wuala in August 2008. In early 2009, he sold the company to LaCie, the French-American manufacturer of external storage solutions, and joined the management team of LaCie to work on the future of storage solutions.

Link: www.wuala.com and www.lacie.com

IS&T Colloquium Committee Host: Ben Kobler