HP Adds Archiving Apps

Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) today beefed up its archiving system in hopes of cashing in on the rapidly growing compliance market.

HP announced performance enhancements, as well as expanded application support for the Reference Information Storage System (RISS), which it acquired with Persist Technologies in 2003 (see HP Buys Archive Guys). HP rolled out its first RISS product last May (see HP Delivers Storage Grid Solution).

Paul OBrien, formerly Persist’s CEO and now HP’s director of ILM, says HP plans frequent upgrades to the RISS platform. There’s little reason to doubt him, considering market research firm IDC forecasts the compliance market will increase at a 22 percent compound annual growth rate and pass $20 billion in 2009 (see IDC: Compliance Market to Pass $20B).

“This is the first major set of improvements and one of many announcements you’ll see in this space,” O’Brien says. Plans call for support of CIFS, NFS, and applications aimed at vertical markets such as healthcare.

HP acquired Persist for its email archiving, an application that plays a major role in helping companies stay compliant with regulatory constraints. Today HP added support for Lotus Domino/Notes to the RISS archiving application that moves email to lower-cost storage over its lifetime. The application previously only supported Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) Exchange. O’Brien says HP will add RISS support for databases and customer relationship management (CRM) applications. HP is also rolling out a RISS Software Development Kit to help software vendors port applications to RISS.