Impossible Cloud is a company that is building and operating a global network of enterprise-grade data centers to provide better cloud services at a fraction of the cost. To learn more about the company, Pulse 2.0 interviewed Impossible Cloud co-founder and chief operating officer Dr. Christian Kaul.
Background Of Impossible Cloud’s Leadership Team
(Impossible Cloud founders Dr. Kai Wawrzinek, Christian Kaul, and Daniel Baker)
The company’s leadership team is composed of experienced technology-company founders with a proven track record in helping and building publicly traded companies and lucrative startups.
“After my fellow co-founder Dr. Kai Wawrzinek and I successfully launched the IPO of GoodGame Studios, which we transformed from a startup into a world-leading online games development company, we wanted to do more and recognized that the technology and movement around web3 provided a chance to help transform the Internet with a new wave of business solutions,” said Dr. Kaul. “We joined with Daniel Baker, Impossible Cloud’s CTO and other Co-founder, who brought a wealth of experience in cloud optimization from his leadership roles at Iron Mountain, D2iQ, and other cutting-edge tech companies. Daniel, Kai, and I have a long personal history and ongoing frustration with big tech cloud companies, which often overcharge for their services and underperform. So, we decided we would harness the benefits of web3 to provide a more performant, cost-effective cloud solution for businesses worldwide.”
Formation Of Impossible Cloud
How did the idea for Impossible Cloud come together? Dr. Kaul pointed out that the concept for Impossible Cloud came together based on a number of signs that indicated market readiness for a next-generation cloud platform, including:
— Inefficiency from underutilized infrastructure: Today’s data centers consume about 3% of the global electric supply and account for about 2% of GHG emissions, a number expected to grow as the demand for cloud services increases. Data center servers that were over-provisioned to handle demand peaks have stranded capacity for cooling, power, and space, putting hard limits on efficiency gains and a strain on communities and businesses alike.
— Security vulnerabilities: Centralized hosting is inherently vulnerable to outages, data loss, or cyber-attacks, and platform providers’ access to hosted data poses an additional security risk for customers.
— Too much control in the hands of too few cloud vendors: A small number of companies control market share and access to cloud infrastructure, creating a lock-in effect with overly complex pricing plans and limiting participation in the innovation economy.
“Recognizing these issues and many other inherent flaws in legacy “web2“ solutions, our team felt the time was right for a decentralized, intelligent cloud platform based on web3 architecture,” Dr. Kaul added. “A decentralized internet has the potential to lower costs and improve performance for end users; unlock exponential growth by increasing participation and enabling new business services; and reduce environmental impact by putting underutilized computing assets to work.”
Favorite Memory Working For Impossible Cloud
What has been Dr. Kaul’s favorite memory working for Impossible Cloud so far? “We’re still a new company – which just launched this year – so the best is yet to come. However, with that said, we’re already seeing tremendous success. We are lining up new partnerships, expanding our global network of data centers in the US and Europe, and have secured $10.9 million in funding and backing from leading investors in both web2 and web3. Backing from these experts who know our industry better than anyone is a massive indicator and validation that we are on the forefront of something big,” Dr. Kaul reflected.
Challenges In Building The Company
What have been some of the challenges Dr. Kaul faced in building the company and has the current macroeconomic climate had any effect on the company? “Web3 is typically heavily associated with blockchain and cryptocurrency. By contrast, our definition of ‘web3’ is simply the next level of the internet, powered by decentralized infrastructure and free of dependence on a handful of dominant providers. In our case, this includes an orchestrated network of (enterprise-grade) nodes that are not owned or maintained by one central provider, which brings the benefits of increased resource use optimization and lowered costs that we can pass along to customers. Decentralization is key, but we’re intentionally decoupling web3 from crypto to better serve enterprise customers,” Dr. Kaul replied.
Core Products
What are Impossible Cloud’s core products and features? The company’s comprehensive suite of services offers businesses a faster, cheaper, and more secure multi-service cloud solution at 50%-to-75% cost savings compared to hyperscalers and on-premises private clouds.
“We currently offer cloud storage, which is high-performance, outage-proof, Kubernetes-friendly, and S3-compatible with enterprise-grade security and support. We also offer analytics, which includes capabilities for no-code data management, faster business insights, data governance, custom ETL requests, and more. Businesses can procure Impossible Cloud’s solutions with fiat currency and implement the technology with just a single line of code, eliminating critical roadblocks in widespread B2B web3 adoption,” Dr. Kaul explained. “Furthermore, Impossible Cloud operates out of data centers that are fully compliant with common enterprise standards such as ISO27000 and SOC 2 Type II, among others. We also support all S3 API standard retention modes for object lock/immutability, as well as advanced object versioning. Impossible Cloud’s decentralized architecture is designed for 100% durability and availability and supports an almost unlimited capacity for storage with no hidden costs. By building and operating a global network of enterprise-grade data centers, Impossible Cloud enables reliable performance and efficiency near the customer’s edge.”
Evolution Of Impossible Cloud’s Technology
How has Impossible Cloud’s technology evolved since launching? “We launched the general availability of our object storage solution a few weeks ago, and are constantly developing our solutions to add new capabilities for data storage, analytics, and more,” Dr. Kaul answered. “Soon, we will also roll out a new service to help technology and channel partners better deploy our solution for improved revenue, profit margins, and results for end users.”
Most Significant Milestones
What have been some of Impossible Cloud’s most significant milestones? “Impossible Cloud has achieved two significant milestones in its journey to-date. The first milestone is the successful completion of a heavily oversubscribed €7 million seed round of funding co-led by HV Capital and 1kx and joined by Protocol Labs, TS Ventures, and very early Ventures. This funding round, combined with the capital contributed by the founders, brought the company’s total funding to over €10 million (approximately $10.9 million),” Dr. Kaul highlighted. “The second milestone is the recent announcement of the general availability of Impossible Cloud’s enterprise-grade, native cloud storage solution. This marked a significant achievement for Impossible Cloud as it brought our innovative cloud storage solution to the market, providing businesses with a decentralized, cost-effective, and secure option for their cloud storage needs.”
Customer Success Stories
The company is covering a large variety of cloud storage use cases from hot storage to archiving, backup and disaster recovery, and more. “Our primary target will initially be tech-savvy and, particularly, data-heavy businesses such as online picture or video platforms and industries that rely on frequent backups of large datasets, such as surveillance video providers,” Dr. Kaul responded when asked about customer success. “More generally, we’re targeting companies that already incur more than $10,000 in Cloud storage bills and want to save up to 70% of their monthly TCO. Just a few of the common markets these types of companies operate in include education, media and entertainment, and public sectors. Impossible Cloud is also partnering with and compatible as a cloud storage destination for many industry-leading software companies. We will soon announce specific use cases and some of our industry-leading partners.”
Funding
The company’s latest seed round of funding brings the total to date to over €10 million (approximately $10.9 million). “The funding will be used to accelerate the market entry of our cloud storage solution, which will bridge the gap between traditional and web3 businesses,” Dr. Kaul pointed out.
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Impossible Cloud pursuing? “According to Fortune Business Insights, the global Cloud Storage Market size is projected to reach USD 376.37 Billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 24.0% during the forecast period, 2022-2029,” Dr. Kaul analyzed. “Suffice to say, the enterprise cloud market is enormous and ripe for disruption; therefore, we feel this provides ample opportunity for Impossible Cloud to fill a critical need.”
Trends
What are some of the trends that Dr. Kaul noticed in his field of work? “The cloud industry is ripe for disruption, and in just a few years, the Internet will not look the same as it currently does. Solutions like ours are both a factor influencing this change and an indicator of what the near future holds. The benefits of decentralized solutions are becoming more apparent every day, with many new use cases and benefits emerging. For instance, more organizations are using decentralized cloud solutions like ours as a business-critical IT tool to prevent ransomware attacks. With data spread across different hosts, decentralized solutions have no single point of failure; therefore, even if one host suffers from a breach, the data can still be recovered and protected,” Dr. Kaul emphasized. “We want to help B2B businesses access the benefits of decentralized storage instantaneously. To this point, an organization can switch to Impossible Cloud for their backup storage needs seamlessly and simply, with just one line of code. Making this switch will not only offer industry-leading ransomware protection but also could result in savings of up to 75% of an organization’s total cloud storage spend with little effort relative to the ROI achieved.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Impossible Cloud from its competition? “We provide the first decentralized, enterprise-grade cloud platform. Other decentralized platforms have usually not been enterprise-grade and also tend to be niche solutions such as storage rather than multi-service platforms. Impossible Cloud is made for professional business use, fulfilling a large list of criteria modern businesses require from their Cloud provider. Examples of these requirements are enterprise-grade compliance with standards (such as SOC, ISO, or HIPPA) as well as features such as object lock – or, immutability – as well as version control, programmatic IAM (Identity Access Management) and S3 API compatibility,” Dr. Kaul shared. “Additionally, our revolutionary approach delivers the key benefits of web3 technology, including increased speed, scalability, affordability, and security — without the need for our business clients to transact with tokens or cryptocurrency, which has been a major hindrance to greater web3 adoption for previous decentralized ecosystems.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Impossible Cloud’s future company goals? “We are currently expanding to more data centers and continuing to improve upon our object storage product and existing solutions to provide superior quality, features, and cost. Since our hyperscaler competitors charge business clients substantial fees for individual Cloud services, and our web3 co-disruptors are not focusing on a business-compliant offering, we see a unique opportunity in the market,” Dr. Kaul concluded. “We are also investing in our mid-to-long-term vision to bridge the gap between web2 clients and web3 technology and will continue to introduce new capabilities. In addition to reaching B2B customers, Impossible Cloud is also addressing a vast reseller landscape, allowing system integrators, consulting companies, and managed service providers to directly integrate our storage service into a solution bundle for their clients. This is a common distribution strategy in the cloud service space.”
