Cubbit Hive: the private distributed cloud

<!--HTML-->In the scientific community, we have - at the same time - a strong need to **seamlessly store and share files** with colleagues all around the world, and a major constraint of **data sovereignty**. As many publicly-funded institutions are not allowed to use commercial cloud storage products - as they are run and hosted by foreign companies obeying their own local laws - a common solution is to host a **private cloud infrastructure** within their own premises. However, not every institution can afford the heavy hardware and connectivity infrastructure, along with the required IT workforce for maintenance, that is needed to run efficiently a private cloud solution. In this talk, we present Cubbit Hive: an innovative approach that **decouples the storage service from the need for dedicated infrastructure**, virtualizing a private cloud on a pre-existing network of connected devices. Cubbit Hive intelligently **collects spare storage and computing resources** within the premises of the institution (workstations, small servers, etc.) to enable a distributed storage service that is **encrypted**, **fast**, and **compliant-by-design** with the strongest needs of security and sovereignty.