Deepfile Deals New Hand

In news that highlights a spurt of activity in unstructured file management, Deepfile Corp. has introduced a new product and hopes to announce another round of funding within a month.

Deepfile's new package, Sentinel, is an add-on to its file management appliance, announced last year (see Deepfile Comes to the Surface), which includes two other parts -- Auditor, which creates a metadata record of file information; and Enforcer, which lets administrators query the metadata and set up rules about actions to take on different files (see Deepfile Releases Sentinel).

Sentinel uses Auditor and Enforcer to assemble reports about files stored for specific departments or business divisions in an organization. It automatically emails these reports to particular end users (the department head, for example). According to Deepfile, this approach gives the users, not IT, the ability to determine what happens to their unstructured files.

The keyword here is "unstructured." Unlike products that work with email or structured data, such as databases, Deepfile's gear tracks Microsoft Office files, PDFs, and other kinds of files that hog space on corporate NAS, SAN, or DAS gear. A workflow engine in the software allows policies to be set on different kinds of files. For instance, all PDFs older than four years can be ported to secondary storage.

In some ways, Deepfile is playing catchup with a key competitor, Arkivio Inc., which also makes unstructured file management software -- and appears to be farther along in partnerships and customer announcements.In fairness, though, Arkivio's got a broader charter than Deepfile. Where Deepfile claims to supplement ILM (information lifecycle management) solutions, Arkivio is a software-only vendor that bills itself as a full-fledged ILM provider. It has tweaked its software to work with hardware from EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), Nexsan Technologies Inc., Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP), and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM). The company also has a partnership with Plasmon plc.

Arkivio's integration with these hardware vendors has helped bring in customers like Safeco Insurance and Raytheon. Deepfile, which has its own Intel- and Linux-based platform, once hinted at a potential partnership with NetApp, but that, and a marquee customer, haven't materialized.

Still, Deepfile's at work to change that. A spokeswoman says customer and partnership announcements are in the works, and a round of new funding "significantly greater" than the Austin, Texas-based startup's initial $1 million, is set for announcement in the next few weeks.

Arkivio also is looking to announce a C round of funding this year, its first since 2002. So far, the company has received $12.5 million in venture funding.

Also in its favor, Deepfile says it's got a bit more capability to locate specific information about what's inside a file than Arkivio does. As a result, it can create more detailed classifications of files than Arkivio can.The two solutions appear to be priced in the same ballpark: Deepfile charges a base price of $7,500 for Auditor, plus about $1,000 per terabyte on top of that; a base price of $2,500 for Enforcer, plus $2,500 per terabyte; and about $20 per end user for Sentinel. Arkivio charges abotu $10,000 for central server software, and $5,000 to $6,000 on top of that per terabyte for various applications.

One thing is clear: The pressure is on corporations to get files organized, and demand for this kind of product already has resulted in a couple of acquisitions, such as EMC's buy of Astrum for a pittance last year (see EMC Sucks Up Astrum). The market for unstructured file management is certainly looking big enough to support more startups, and certainly ones with different takes on the problem.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch