Former Plaxo CEO, Ben Golub, now at Gluster

Gluster - an open-source storage company - grabs seasoned social-networking executive

(Updated to correct an earlier version that said Plaxo was purchased by Cisco)

Ben Golub, who sold Plaxo to Comcast for $150-plus million in 2008, has joined Gluster as its chief execuive.

Gluster is a provider of open-source storage solutions that seek to lower the costs of storage for unstructured data, such as video and games. The amount of such data is growing by 80% to doubling each year, said Ben, in this interview with me. Yet the cost side is only falling by 20% to 30%. This leaves room for emerging solutions to bring the costs in line.

In this interview, Ben talks about how Gluster plans to make money as a provider of "open-source" software and says the company is seeking to double the channel partnerships it currently has in order to re-sell its solution. He also talks about the competitive landscape and how Gluster compares to Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, NetApp and Isilon Systems.

As far as storage as a service, Ben says the company doesn't plan to move in this area as it's a costly endeavor. Gluster has raised $4 million in funding since having started in '05. Ben plans do raise additional funds soon, though he says they still have a lot of cash in the bank.

Watch the video for more.