Wasabi adds 'smart storage' to its portfolio with Curio AI acquisition

"Our AI-enhanced storage will be a higher price, but still much cheaper than Amazon, Google and Microsoft."

Cloud storage vendor Wasabi Technologies has acquired Curio AI from GrayMeta to create a smart storage package to add to its portfolio.

The acquisition includes both the intellectual property and the team behind Curio, including GrayMeta's CEO Aaron Edell, who will join Wasabi as SVP of AI and ML.

Wasabi will incorporate the Curio AI technology into a new class of AI-powered smart storage for the media and entertainment industry, which it plans to release in spring 2024.

Curio AI will create a second-by-second index of video stored in Wasabi.

"A video archive without detailed metadata is like a library without a card catalogue," David Friend, CEO at Wasabi tells CRN.

Starting in February, Wasabi plans to add a "smart storage with AI" package for a higher price than its standard storage.

"Our AI-enhanced storage will be a higher price, but still much cheaper than Amazon, Google and Microsoft," Friend says.

Pitching to the channel

"Simplicity is key for channel success since they carry many products," Friend explains when asked about the marketability of this product in the channel.

"An integrated solution where you just upload video and metadata is automatic makes it easy to demo, POC and sell.

"Billing is straightforward based on storage usage. We try to ensure good channel margins on Wasabi.

"The channel loves our reserved capacity pricing model where you buy storage upfront on one-, three- or five-year contracts - it's like selling hardware. Salespeople get the full commission immediately.

"We also have a billing API where MSPs can buy Wasabi in bulk at a discount, then resell storage to sub-accounts - we provide the usage details for invoicing.

"The channel loves that additional revenue stream."

Friend adds that Wasabi has plans for certifications at different levels to be provided to partners and will allow white-labelling with this product.

"Most media asset management and video editing systems that partners already sell can interface with Curio," he says.

"Their resellers can bundle those with Wasabi storage. I hope we can train channel to understand combining those pieces for customers.

"Even non-video companies like Wasabi have training videos that can be indexed."

Behind the deal

"It all started when I was visiting Major League Baseball, the organisation that oversees all the baseball teams in the United States," he says recollecting how the idea of acquiring Curio came about.

"They have a huge archive of old LTO tapes going back 30 years with recordings of every game played in the US.

"I suggested they should treasure this content and be able to reuse it. They said the problem is if they move all that data to the cloud, they still can't find anything because the metadata is handwritten on the tape boxes - just the teams, date, etc.

This, Friend explains, highlighted to him the importance of metadata for the video format.

"Video takes up more space than alphanumeric data, so metadata is key.

"The Boston Red Sox, a Wasabi customer, were experimenting with Curio for video tagging.

"I saw Curio could provide the metadata and acquired their tech and team.

"At IBC Amsterdam, we demoed the integrated Wasabi storage and Curio metadata solution - upload video to Wasabi and Curio automatically indexes it."

2024 expansion

Friend estimates there are 400 exabytes of video archive out there, very little of which has been migrated to the cloud because of the metadata problem.

"It's a huge opportunity for channel to help sports teams, TV networks, video production houses, broadcasters, etc. take their tape archives to the cloud.

"Cost is lower now and metadata makes it usable. They can finally take advantage of instant search instead of digging through boxes."

In 2024, Friend hopes to continue sustaining 60-70 per cent annual growth, even though he admits that is challenging.

Hiring, new datacentres, staying ahead of competition on performance and costs are all key to succeeding in this goal.

"Running exabyte-scale storage is complicated, only Wasabi, Amazon, Google and Microsoft do it.

"Demand is almost infinite as data grows exponentially.

"I want to stick to our focus of being the best pure cloud storage vendor.

"That success against giants has been through focus on one product. The market potential is enormous, and we make it easy for channel to include Wasabi in deals."