Capricorn Technologies

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Capricorn Technologies is a low-cost, high-density, energy efficient data storage solutions provider based in San Francisco, California. The founder and CEO is C.R. Saikley.

Capricorn Technologies traces its roots to the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle to build an “Internet Library” to preserve all human knowledge. In December of 2003, Kahle contacted his longtime friend, C.R. Saikley, with a proposal: develop the Archive’s next-generation storage system. The system would have to be inexpensive to manufacture and operate, it would have to be reliable and, with an initial target of 1 Petabyte, it would have to be massively scalable.

Saikley began by evaluating off-the-shelf solutions, thinking that surely there was already something available that met the cost, density and power consumption requirements specified by Kahle. However, he soon discovered that there was nothing available that achieved what he knew was possible, so he and the PetaBox team began development of their own solution.

The success of the custom design hinged on staying within a tight power budget. The critical goals of high storage density, reliability, and low operating and cooling costs were all dependent on low power consumption. The team achieved its goals with a 100TB system which was placed in service in June of 2004.

At that same time, Kahle and Saikley began discussing ways to make PetaBox technology available on a wider scale, and Capricorn Technologies was formed. Capricorn began operations shortly thereafter and shipped its first products in September of 2004.

Today Capricorn Technologies continues to attempt to expand the PetaBox family, providing Linux-based storage solutions with the lowest possible Total Cost of Ownership to leading universities, research labs, web service providers, national libraries, major scientific and computational facilities, video film archives, and massive digital preservation sites worldwide.^{[opinion needs balancing]}