Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 19th March 2009
2 COMMENTS 
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Innovative online storage and file sharing service Wuala has some big news today. The Swiss company are ‘merging’ their online backup service with established French external storage device company LaCie.
Dominik Grolimund, Wuala’s CEO and co-founder says
“We’re very proud to announce that we join forces with LaCie. This is a major leap forward for Wuala and will bring us to the next level. LaCie is the perfect match for us.”
Wuala launched publicly in August of last year and gained impressive press coverage and popularity amongst users and analysts alike - we covered the company here and interviewed Grolimund here. The nine members of Wuala’s development will remain with the company but will also be joined by a team of LaCie staff, all working towards enhancing product offerings.
“This merge has allowed us to acquire a very innovative online storage solution that will transform our company from a leading hardware manufacturer to a comprehensive digital storage provider,” said Philippe Spruch, founder and CEO of LaCie.
Grolimund makes clear that there will be absolutely no changes to Wuala as a product, all current and future users will only benefit from the merger. A list of FAQ’s have been provided for any current users concerned about potential changes.
Written on 16th December 2008
4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Those of you who aren’t shifting their desktop office to an online one are falling behind. The new generation of ultra geeks is working in… “the cloud”! One of the cool European start-ups facilitating this trend is Wuala, a Swiss online hard disk service. Since the launch in August (after a three-year Alpha), the Zurich-based start-up has “gained substantial traction” – says co-founder and CEO Dominik Grolimund. “The user base grows quickly and 30 million files have been stored and shared already.” Grolimund now expects further growth since he and his team are making the service more accessible.
Taking those barriers away
A new release with a new web interface and API will enable Wuala users to make selected files available on the web, so they can be easily and directly accessed by anyone or embedded in blogs and websites. Users can now also send “secret” links to privately shared files without requiring recipients to register or sign up to view the files. See a typical Swiss example here.
Really, you can trust us
When I wrote that you’re falling behind if you’re not operating in the magical cloud, I of course exaggerated. There are millions of people who wouldn’t even consider storing their most precious and important files online. People prefer their “safe” desktop. Thus the gentlemen from Wuala focus on security. Every press release consists a mention of their unique encryption technology – developed in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
The latest one also contains some reassuring words from co-founder and CTO Luzius Meisser: “Security is a major priority for us. We want our users to feel confident that their files are completely secure in Wuala. They never have to worry about who has access to them because they are in total control.” It shows they realize that their biggest challenge will be to convince average Joe.
What about you? Are you, probably an early adopter, already storing your files online on services like Wuala and Box.net?
Written on 20th September 2008
11 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Here’s another great idea I heard during Web 2.0 Expo New York. Dania Gerhardt from social collaboration platform Amazee (review here) told me about her brand new office in San Francisco. Somewhat surprised, I asked her how an-angel funded start-up could afford that. To my excitement, she told me the Swiss government provides promising tech start-ups like Amazee a shared office space in downtown San Francisco. Isn’t that a genius way of supporting your national start-ups?
The building is called Swissnex. Here’s an explanation from the web site:
Swissnex San Francisco is initiated by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research (SER) as a public-private venture, and managed in cooperation with the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs, swissnex San Francisco is an annex of the Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco. Vital financial support is provided by public and private sponsors sharing swissnex San Francisco’s commitment to “connecting the dots.”
Amazee got this office space thanks to the CTI Startup program, initiated by the Swiss Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology. When they enter the building on 730 Montgomery Street (which dates from 1852), they have wireless Internet connections, video/audio-conferencing, projection capabilities, and a fancy board room to play around with. What makes it even more interesting, is the fact that any Swiss with something interesting on his mind can work at Swissnex. So apart from the fact that Amazee can operate in world’s most booming tech atmosphere, they’ll also be inspired by other ambitious folks.
Swissnexx also has offices in Shanghai, Singapore, and Boston.
Does your country support a similar initiative? Or do you think that it’s actually a waste of money? I know plenty of people who dislike anything subsidized, so this post may be an interesting foundation for a good discussion.
Whatever the result of that discussion will be, I don’t think Swiss entrepreneurs like the Amazee team and Dominik Grolimund from Wuala (review here) will really mind. They have an excellent opportunity to build their presence in Silicon Valley.
Written on 14th August 2008
8 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Ladies and gents, Swiss start-up Wuala has launched. This is a free social online storage service. What’s up with the “social” part, you might ask. Well, it refers to the easy share features and the possibility to see what your friends are uploading. In addition to centralized servers, Wuala is a mesh/cloud/P2P storage which can harness idle resources of participating users and thus provide a better solution – there are no file size limits, no bandwidth limits, etcetera. That makes them different from famous competitors like Box.net.
The technology has been developed at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Files on Wuala are encrypted, so that might reassure people who are still a bit afraid of online storing. Even the founders won’t get to see what people are saving on their online hard disk.
Wuala was in alpha mode for three long years, founder Dominik Grolimund told us during an interview in June. They allegedly had “tens of thousands of alpha users and thousands of communities around the world are actively sharing millions of files.” So they’re used to a rather large crowd using their service. Let’s see how they cope with it now.
Written on 29th June 2008
3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.
This time we’re interviewing Dominik Grolimund from Wuala. This is a free social online storage service. The “social” refers to the easy share features and the possibility to see what your friends are uploading. In addition to centralized servers, Wuala is a mesh/cloud/P2P storage which can harness idle resources of participating users and thus provide a better solution – there are no file size limits, no bandwidth limits, etcetera. The files are encrypted, so that might reassure people who are still a bit afraid of online storing.
Developing a service like this, takes quite some time and effort. So I thought it might be interesting for you to learn from Dominik’s experiences. Moreover, although his service will remain in closed alpha, we do have 50 invites for you. Instructions follow below.
How did you come up with the idea of Wuala?
“We started research and development on Wuala 3.5 years ago at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Our goal was to build something that was both challenging from a research point of view but which also had a great potential. Distributed storage systems were a hot research topic at that time and building a system that can harness idle resources seemed very promising, as the need for online storage was rising and file sizes were increasing. The research projects had an academic focus only – we wanted to realize it and make it work in practice for millions of users.” (more…)
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
