Index Engines Chugs Out SDK

Index Engines Inc. is offering a software development kit (SDK) for its data classification program in hopes of reaping new business and getting the inside track in searchable, stored data.

The startup, founded in 2003, has started distributing development tools based on its API (application programming interface) to its customer base of resellers and OEMs. The kit is free to companies that pay $5,000 to join the startup's partner program, but the fee is being waived this year, as Index Engines works to get word out. The company will also provide the SDK free to end users that buy its data classification appliance, which starts at $29,500.

Products like Index Engines' are rapidly emerging as necessities in big data centers. They use SAN or NAS as the starting point for indexing corporate data and making it searchable. (See In Search of... Enterprise Search.) The idea is to grab data as it's stored, parse it for metadata, and stack that neatly in a form that can be deployed in automated tiered storage setups.

But new data classification wares from Index Engines and others work chiefly with email, Office documents, and other kinds of unstructured data. Finding the documents that need to be kept in all this corporate flotsam in a reasonable timeframe can be a problem. Certain names showing up in email messages and even certain terms in an industry's argot can flag significant messages and files required for compliant records management.

That's where Index Engines and its competitors come in. Their ability to create searches, find data in storage instead of the live server, and automate policies is a potential gold mine. But tailoring tools to work with specific organizations -- to recognize financial or healthcare terms inside emails, for instance -- is a challenge.