The OpenWater Blog

A Snowball Lands on our Island

You might not associate snowballs with islands… but starting this week, OpenWater has both.

First: the snowball

It arrived by UPS and weighed approximately 75 lbs. You might think the internet doesn’t weigh anything… but it does. The “Amazon snowball” contains 100T of information. (One terabyte equals 1 trillion bytes, so 100 trillion special snowflakes, err, bytes.)

An Amazon snowball is used to pull data from the cloud and re-install the data in a physical location faster than it can be downloaded (“encrypt and ship”). Snowballs are recommended whenever you have more than 2T of data to move. The snowball came on behalf of a client whose data requirements increased 3x over last year. To download this data over our high speed network it would’ve taken 29 days!!

(Moving more data? Bezos has you covered with the Amazon Snowplow plan. No joke.)

OpenWater Islands

Where did the snowball land? Smack in the middle of our new initiative: OpenWater Islands.

Islands is a formalization of our commitment to 3rd party integrations.

Our software is only as competitive as our ability to be flexible and forward looking. Integrations are key. They extend our platform’s capabilities and make life easier for our clients.

Like an island, an integration sits alone in the context of our platform. Integrations are specific, tailored conduits between other software systems.

(Executive decision: future island initiatives will be dubbed “Gilligan’s” and “Galápagos”.)

“Yes, we accept fiat”

Discussion and deliberation continue with regards to taking on outside funding for growth.

Last week, Tim met with MAVA (Mid Atlantic Venture Association). Access to capital through traditional avenues is not risk-free, but does come with considerations.

Tim gave a talk to 20 CEOs at Vistage about the history of money…and the exciting new developments with blockchain and tokens.

Relatedly, Tim had a discussion with Templum, a firm exploring blockchain possibilities. (For anyone wondering, they accept payment in bitcoin and fiat.)

Office Optimizing

We’re getting settled in our new, larger offices in Ballston. The new location is just two blocks from Metro and Bikeshare. We’re having an official party on Friday, February 23rd at 4 PM. You’re invited: 4401 Fairfax Drive, second floor.

Kunal added a wall of photographs in his office. There are 40 canvas prints celebrating milestones since 2007. The photos are a shout out to everyone, past and present.

There’s also now an office Erg machine. The Concept 2 is a professional rowing machines used by the athletes in our office. It will be used while we wait for our building’s new gym, being built now.

Also new is the weekly order of healthy food for all employees (thanks, Rebecca!). This includes hummus and chopped veggies for our vegans. If this sounds good to you, we’re hiring.

Also new: our team has joined the local Toastmaster’s club, Free and Wild. Cheers!

Above: Kunal and Dan inspect the Amazon Snowball upon arrival.

Katie McCaskey

Katie is OpenWater's Content Director. Her interests include entrepreneurship, permaculture, and blockchain. She enjoys spicy food and salty words.

OpenWater Moves Headquarters to Ballston

An Optimism High. Careful, It’s Contagious.