In this week's interview, we talk to Mr. Dave Wright, CEO of Jungle Tools LLC -- the company behind the Jungle Disk remote storage application and service.

A relatively new company, Jungle Tools has received a  good deal of coverage, including reviews in GigaOm and Lifehacker. JungleDisk is among the pioneers of a new generation of effective and innovative services, using Amazon S3 as a backend.

 

 

 

Tell us about yourself and how you came to be involved with Jungle  Disk.

I've been interested in the online storage space for several years. The growing importance of what we store on our hard drives, combined with widespread broadband adoption and the growing acceptance of web-based services has created a huge opportunity for cost effective and easy to use online storage and backup. With the launch of Amazon S3 two years ago, I saw a real opportunity to build an innovative online storage company without requiring the major investments in infrastructure usually required in this space. I tested the waters with an early beta release of the Jungle Disk software and the response was so overwhelming that it became clear this was a huge opportunity.

 

Please describe, in a few words of your own, what Jungle Disk is and who are its customers.

Jungle Disk is software that provides online storage and automatic backup in conjunction with the Amazon S3 service. The software makes your Amazon S3 storage appear as a local drive letter, making it easy to copy files back and forth or share your storage space on multiple machines. The built-in automatic backup features allow you to keep important files and directories backed up securely off-site on Amazon's servers.
The current software is primarily targeted at consumers, but we have a large number of businesses using it as well, simply because the price and functionality is far better than anything else on the market right now.

 

What are the advantages of using Jungle Disk over traditional backup and storage solutions like, for example, flash memory sticks and FTP servers?

With local backup options, such as flash drives, USB hard drives, or burning DVDs you've got hardware to buy, separate software to set up, and limited capacity. At the end of the day you've also got a backup that is probably sitting on the same desk as your computer, which means that a fire or natural disaster would probably take out your backup as well. Amazon S3 offers gives you unlimited online storage space that you can access from anywhere for only $0.15 per gigabyte. FTP servers alone don't really offer a comparable solution - you need servers and somewhere to host them, as well as separate backup software, most of which doesn't support FTP. You also still end up with a single point of failure for your backups. Amazon S3 is designed in a redundant, distributed fashion that keeps multiple copies of your data at different datacenters and ensures it is available when you need it. There really isn't anything else that can compare to the level of reliability and security they offer.

 

What sets Jungle Disk apart from competing services and how do your customers benefit from using it?

Jungle Disk has a several key advantages over other online storage and backup services.
The first is that it's not just backup - you can use the virtual drive feature to store or share files between machines and access them from anywhere. You can even move files off your hard drive and onto the online storage space if you need to free up space.
Second is the pricing - Amazon only charges you for what you actually use, with no minimums or maximums. You aren't locked in to a tiered storage scheme where you're either buying too much or not enough.
Of course the fact that it's Amazon providing the backend is a huge advantage in itself. You don't need to worry about scalability, reliability, or whether your storage provider will still be around a year or two down the road when you need to restore your data.

 

In your opinion, will consumer solutions related to storage and computing "in the cloud" become popular and even ubiquitous among regular internet users?

Absolutely - broadband continues to get faster, storage costs are dropping, and consumers have more data than ever that needs to be backed up - pictures, music, documents, home movies, and more. Most consumer's today aren't backing up at all, and thousands lose irreplaceable files every year. The ease of use combined with the security offered by online storage will ultimately win out over legacy backup options that are too cumbersome, expensive, or limited for typical consumers.

 

Tell us something about your team and its history.

Prior to starting Jungle Disk I helped start GameSpy Industries, a leader in video game media and technology. I served as Chief Architect for both GameSpy and IGN Entertainment. My VP of Operations, Scott Gibson, recently joined from an Atlanta company called Market Velocity that runs an online marketplace.

 

What can we expect from Jungle Disk in the future?

We're getting ready to release a major update - Jungle Disk 2.0, which adds a huge number of highly requested features and will make the software significantly easier to set up and use. We're also going to be launching a beta of a new workgroup-oriented product for small and mid-size businesses that need online storage.
This market is really just starting to develop, and there are opportunities all over the map, from servers to mobile.

 

Which websites do you visit daily?

Slashdot, CNN, and News.com are my daily must-visits.