The name
Every human. 33 megatons of good.
When Jonathan was a child, someone told him that an atom bomb carried a megaton of destruction — but that people, together, were capable of thirty-three times that much good. The idea stuck.
33Mega is named for it: a reminder of what technology is for. Our job is to build infrastructure that quietly does its work, so the people who rely on it — storytellers, archivists, broadcasters, engineers — are free to do theirs.
The mission
Organisations should never have to choose between the freedom of open technology and the confidence of a fully supported product.
Why we started 33Mega
Two compromises we refused to keep making.
For years, organisations buying storage have faced a choice between two compromises.
On one side sit the traditional enterprise vendors. Their platforms work, but at a price: proprietary hardware, proprietary software licences, and upgrade cycles dictated by someone else's roadmap. Migrating away gets harder every year as the data estate grows.
On the other side sits open-source software. Platforms like Ceph have matured into some of the most capable storage technologies in existence — they run at CERN, inside hyperscale clouds, and across more than 10,000 deployments worldwide. But open source is a platform, not a product. Running it well takes senior storage engineers, and most media organisations don't have that team and can't justify hiring one.
Proprietary platforms are expensive and restrictive; running open source yourself is hard. 33Mega is the bridge between those two worlds.
What we believe
We keep our beliefs short, because we intend to be held to them.
- Customers should own their data. Open formats, standard protocols, hardware you own — including the freedom to leave us.
- Support matters more than licensing. We charge for the engineering and support that keep storage healthy — not for locking you into a proprietary product.
- Infrastructure should last. We extend the life of hardware rather than engineer reasons to replace it.
- Lean is a feature. We run a small company deliberately, so customers pay for engineering and support, not overhead.
Built on experience
The founders.
Peter Watling and Jonathan Morgan met at Object Matrix, the media storage company Jonathan founded and led. Between them: decades of designing, delivering and supporting storage and media workflows for broadcasters, post-production facilities, sports organisations, archives and content creators.
Together they also established a cloud storage service that became a strategic part of the business — so keep your eyes peeled for what's to come!
Peter Watling
Co-Founder · Co-Owner
Peter is an advocate for innovative technology companies and has spent his career getting media technology into the hands of the people who need it. Recently he founded a business consultancy to help a range of international media technology companies grow and expand into new regions.
At Object Matrix he led EMEA sales, and following the acquisition by DataCore ran the media operation across the region.
Off the clock he is a serious cyclist, and the founder of Velokom, a charitable company that supports the families of riders seriously injured or lost on the road.
Jonathan Morgan
Co-Founder · Co-Owner
Jonathan is an entrepreneur and technology leader based in Cardiff. He founded and led Object Matrix, the company that pioneered object storage for the media industry, and after its acquisition held SVP Product and Technology responsibility across Object Matrix, Swarm and OpenEBS at Perifery/DataCore.
His work spans commercial contracts, product strategy, AI, cloud services, object storage and media workflows — and the practical leadership needed to get from architecture diagrams to systems that run for years.
Away from the desk, Jonathan is madly into pickleball, picking up his paddle for competition three times a week, and is a keen Luton Town FC supporter. Don’t hold that against him — someone has to live that rollercoaster!
What makes 33Mega different
Claims you can check.
Every storage vendor claims to hate lock-in. We think the claim only counts when you can test it, so here is ours in checkable form:
- Our platforms are built on Ceph — open-source software proven at CERN, not code we control.
- The hardware is standard equipment from Dell, bought on the open market and owned by you.
- Data is stored in open formats and served over standard protocols, including S3.
- We document how to leave — off-boarding is written down, not discovered.
What we add is everything that makes open source usable as a product: hardware validation, design, build, integration with your workflows, 24×7 monitoring, managed upgrades, and enterprise support with a four-hour software SLA — delivered by people who have spent their careers in media.
If you ever leave us
This is the section no vendor writes, so we will.
If 33Mega disappeared tomorrow, or you simply chose to go elsewhere: your hardware is yours — standard and reusable. Your data sits in Ceph, open-source software with a large global community and multiple commercial support providers. Your applications talk to it over standard S3 and file protocols. Off-boarding is documented, not discovered.
We believe making it easy to leave is the best reason to stay.
Looking forward
We're not trying to be the biggest storage company. We're trying to be the most trusted.
The company media organisations call because the platform works, the support answers, and the exit door is never locked. When infrastructure quietly does its job, people are free to do theirs. That's the idea the company is named after.
Talk to a media workflow specialist, not a sales script.
Tell us about your workflow — capacity, performance, growth — and we will design an Atom around it. No obligation, no jargon, no lock-in.