Mr. Dave Wright, CEO of Jungle Tools LLC

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, combinedwith widespread broadband adoption and the growing acceptance ofweb-based services has created a huge opportunity for cost effectiveand easy to use online storage and backup. With the launch of AmazonS3 two years ago, I saw a real opportunity to build an innovativeonline storage company without requiring the major investments ininfrastructure usually required in this space. I tested the waterswith an early beta release of the Jungle Disk software and theresponse was so overwhelming that it became clear this was a hugeopportunity.

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

Jungle Disk is software that provides online storage and automaticbackup in conjunction with the Amazon S3 service. The software makesyour Amazon S3 storage appear as a local drive letter, making it easyto copy files back and forth or share your storage space on multiplemachines. The built-in automatic backup features allow you to keepimportant files and directories backed up securely off-site onAmazon's servers.
The current software is primarily targeted at consumers, but we have alarge number of businesses using it as well, simply because the priceand functionality is far better than anything else on the market rightnow.

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

With local backup options, such as flash drives, USB hard drives, orburning 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 backupthat is probably sitting on the same desk as your computer, whichmeans that a fire or natural disaster would probably take out yourbackup as well. Amazon S3 offers gives you unlimited online storagespace that you can access from anywhere for only $0.15 per gigabyte.FTP servers alone don't really offer a comparable solution - you needservers and somewhere to host them, as well as separate backupsoftware, most of which doesn't support FTP. You also still end upwith a single point of failure for your backups. Amazon S3 is designedin a redundant, distributed fashion that keeps multiple copies of yourdata at different datacenters and ensures it is available when youneed it. There really isn't anything else that can compare to thelevel of reliability and security they offer.

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

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

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

Absolutely - broadband continues to get faster, storage costs aredropping, and consumers have more data than ever that needs to bebacked up - pictures, music, documents, home movies, and more. Mostconsumer's today aren't backing up at all, and thousands loseirreplaceable files every year. The ease of use combined with thesecurity offered by online storage will ultimately win out over legacybackup options that are too cumbersome, expensive, or limited fortypical consumers.

Tell us something about your team and its history.

Prior to starting Jungle Disk I helped start GameSpy Industries, aleader in video game media and technology. I served as Chief Architectfor both GameSpy and IGN Entertainment. My VP of Operations, ScottGibson, recently joined from an Atlanta company called Market Velocitythat 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, whichadds a huge number of highly requested features and will make thesoftware significantly easier to set up and use. We're also going tobe launching a beta of a new workgroup-oriented product for small andmid-size businesses that need online storage.
This market is really just starting to develop, and there areopportunities all over the map, from servers to mobile.

Which websites do you visit daily?

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