How is ThreeFold better for the customer than Amazon Cloud or Google Cloud?

#1

This question came in via Telegram so I thought I would add it here and bring my thoughts. Anyone else feel free to chime in or correct me if I made any mistakes!

While for sure there are benefits to centralized cloud providers including robust feature sets and big customer service teams, there are a few key and important differences we think any customer would care about:

Centralization
This is the biggest and most obvious difference. With something like Amazon or Google Cloud, the data is stored in centralized data centers owned by private corporations. These data centers are susceptible to hacking and outages that can take down massive chunks of the Internet. With ThreeFold, data is stored on the peer-to-peer ThreeFold Grid, where the physical hardware is owned by a Farmer, and the data is owned by / only accessible to the person(s) who put it there. So, hackers can’t get in and due to the decentralized nature of the Grid, location-based outages would be much less likely as well.

Security
Centralized clouds are secure but vulnerable. ThreeFold prides ourselves on security. The peer-to-peer nature of the technology means end-to-end transmission of data between parties (with no middlemen). This is a big one. Nothing is being stored or copied in central servers. Also, ThreeFold self-driving / self-healing IT removes the need for human intervention and eliminates many back doors present in current architecture. So security issues caused by human error and hacking possibilities both diminish greatly. Then there’s the storage algorithm which makes it nearly impossible for data to be lost. And on & on. You can find more info on our wiki.

Privacy
The fact that you own your data / nobody can even get access to it and connections are peer-to-peer are the two main factors that make ThreeFold incredibly more private than centralized cloud providers.

Cost
In the end, the centralized cloud is expensive. ThreeFold cloud pricing is / will be much more cost-effective than the Cloud. You can read more about this here (and check the link at the bottom as well).

Energy Efficiency
We hope customers might care about their impact on the environment and ThreeFold is up to 100x more energy-efficient than centralized cloud providers.

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#2

Great summary, I would add one element, which is at the edge. The lightweight operating system makes it possible and even easy to install a node close to where the data is to be consumed. There is no need for large surfaces, nor for heavy power supply installations.
Moreover, installing the zero-OS operating system will soon also be available on ARM infrastructure, making it a candidate to become the operating system for IoT devices, connecting these devices to the internet while maintaining the agility of cloud. Also for 5G, smart cities, VR/AR, local cloud capacity is an important requirement. This is something that centralized cloud providers, operating from their hyperscale datacenters, will never achieve.

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#3

Nice one, @Geert! Thank you for the addition.

#4

Love the post and summery @sam and def. agree with the @geert about the #attheedge.

#5

Dear Sam, I believe we should be careful stating numbers. Can you please explain to me, how your statement of 100x more energy efficiency is meant? Many thanks, Otto

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#6

There is some discussion here: How does ThreeFold achieve 10x and more energy efficiency numbers
And here: https://new.threefold.io/blog/post/for_our_planet/

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#7

I understand your thoughts here Otto. And thanks for sharing those links, @scott.

We need to be careful about these types of claims but I know @kristof is quite confident in this statement and has repeated that we should not be afraid to share just how much more efficient we are / can be than what’s out there.

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