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Diligent Cracks Open: Page 3 of 4

The company was founded last June when it acquired EMC's Tel Aviv R&D center, which developed storage backup technologies. EMC, which owns 24 percent of the company, has pumped $5 million in cash and $4.6 million worth of equipment and products into the new company. In addition, the fledgling company was given a $10 million set of wings through majority stakeholder Moshe Yanai's investment firm, Credo Group.

Through its EMC channel, Diligent has already managed to gain a number of impressive customers for its existing mainframe software, including Ford Motor Co., Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., and Stanford University. The company says it already has about 45 installations and has issued more than 70 licenses for that product. "This isn't your typical startup," insists Parise. He says the company is aiming to reach profitability by the end of 2004.

While the EMC agreement has proved valuable to Diligent, the company is quick to point out that it is free to partner with other resellers as well. The company said today that three value-added resellers (VARs) will resell, service, and support its VTF software: ABBA Technologies, Eastern Computer Exchange Inc., and Stack Computer.

Diligent doesn't yet have paying customers for its new open systems software, but it claims to have several beta trials ongoing at the moment.

Interestingly, Diligent has decided to price its new software not per terabyte, but based on throughput. Depending on how many front-end ports a customers needs, the annual licensing fee for the software ranges from $35,000 to $160,000.