Deepfile Becomes StoredIQ

Hit the URL for StoredIQ and you'll land on the Website of Deepfile Corp., a three-year-old maker of file management appliances. It's no accident: The new name, which becomes official Monday, goes with a new mission and new product that highlight an emerging ILM (information lifecycle management) specialty, namely helping companies sort through unstructured data and stay out of trouble.

StoredIQ's new focus is on "content-driven compliance and security for unstructured data." [Ed. note: CDCASFUD, anyone?] The gist is separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to email and the flotsam of corporate networks, including MP3 music files, image files, Excel charts, and Office documents -- all of which can take up sizeable chunks of server and storage space and present a range of problems for organizations.

These problems aren't just centered around discovering who's surfing porn sites after lunch or using their workstations to download the Beatles canon. How does a healthcare organization ensure that records pertaining to particular classes of patients -- people over 90, for instance -- are stored in compliance with the new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)? How can a large conglomerate's accounting department ensure its ducks are in order for the SEC's lawyers?

These kinds of internal and external regulatory tasks have become a big part of what storage networking is all about. More than one third of the reasoning behind archiving email in the first place, for example, is to comply with regulations, according to figures cited in a recent Byte and Switch Insider report, ILM: At the Crest of a Wave. Add in other unstructured data and it's easy to see why a market is forming around getting control of it all.

Some of these issues have been taken up by vendors active in ILM. But StoredIQ execs say their wares go beyond ILM. They also differ from products geared to that part of ILM known as content-addressed storage (CAS). "With a lot of CAS systems, someone has to manually tell the system what to do with a particular file," says StoredIQ CEO Bob Fernander. That means searching for files ahead of time before the system can be programmed to take action with them.StoredIQ aims to streamline this by automatically finding files that contain specific characteristics or keywords. The company's new StoredIQ 3.0 is a Linux-based appliance (an enhanced version of the firm's original platform -- see Deepfile Comes to the Surface) that not only creates metadata from basic file information, but peers into the content of files to search for keywords or specific kinds of information, such as inappropriate images, foul language, and other no-nos. Then it puts files where they belong, according to preset rules -- whether that's disk array, tape library, or trash bin.

StoredIQ isn't alone in aiming to cash in on what it sees as a hot new market. Arkivio Inc. has long had a series of products aimed at tracking and organizing unstructured data files for compliance. But StoredIQ claims to be able to go deeper into the content of files.

At least one other startup, Mountain View, Calif.-based Kazeon Inc., is still in stealth but claims to be looking at exactly the same content-level identification of files for automated sorting. Founded by Sudhakar Muddu, formerly CEO of Sanera, which was acquired by McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA) for $102 million in 2003 (see McData Completes Sanera Acquisition), Kazeon plans to unveil itself and its product early in March. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, StoredIQ, which is aware of Kazeon as its potential rival, isn't stalling on getting its stake in the ground. A key strategy is to target potential customers with add-on software "lexicons" that enable the StoredIQ 3.0 appliance to work with specific vertical markets.

The first module, available now, will enable insurance companies and other healthcare businesses to find email and files containing specific terms and kinds of content related to meeting HIPAA requirements. Other lexicons will be released over time to help other vertical-market customers, like financial services companies looking to meet SEC requirements for storing data.StoredIQ 3.0 interacts with any encryption device, though the vendor must set that up using a proprietary language. The vendor's appliance interoperates with LockVault, a compliance product from Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP), and with the Centera systems from EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC). It works on 10/100-Ethernet LANs and supports CIFS, NFS, Netware, and AFS filing systems. Pricing starts at $50,000 for a one-year subscription for 1 Tbyte of storage and 500 users.

Bottom line? Startups like StoredIQ and Kazeon are clearly onto something. It remains to be seen, however, how much of a foothold they can gain in an emerging market. EMC, NetApp, and other players aren't likely to pass up their chance at enhancing compliance, even if it means scarfing up one of these new innovators.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch