FreeDrive Uses Nirvanix on Facebook

SAN DIEGO -- Nirvanix today announced that FreeDrive has selected, implemented and now officially launched its service using Nirvanixs Storage Delivery Network, a global online storage platform optimized for media applications. FreeDrive is a personal online storage and file sharing application that works across social networks. With today’s announcement, FreeDrive is now available first as a Facebook application enabling its registered users to host and share photos, videos, music and documents among their existing Facebook friends and groups. FreeDrive has exited its beta period with over 100,000 users and is expected to register another one million users conservatively over the next six months.

FreeDrive offers customers 1 GB of free storage that serves as an Internet hard drive while providing online access to files that can then be linked and posted to Facebook. Prior to partnering with Nirvanix, FreeDrive hosted, stored and delivered these files in a Tier-1 co-location site on hardware they had to purchase, maintain and service. The costs associated with purchasing storage commensurate to their growth forecasts and managing the storage became prohibitive and stifled the company’s aggressive expansion plans so FreeDrive looked into other options.

“When we began passing several terabytes of storage, we were faced with the decision whether to continue providing it ourselves or go through an outside vendor,” said Michael Witz, Chairman and Founder of FreeDrive. “Going with an outside provider was more economical and saves us time and energy. We heard about Nirvanix and Amazon S3. Going with Nirvanix was a real easy choice. Nirvanix provided a high level of customer service while Amazon was more of a ‘do-it-yourself’ proposition. Nirvanix’s technology is further along than Amazon’s with value-added media management tools already built in and an API that worked with our backend. And, providing online storage to outside companies isn’t exactly Amazon’s core business focus. We didn’t want to risk our business on them.”

Nirvanix Inc.