Startups Go the Distance

Two startups that will eventually go head-to-head in the continuous data protection (CDP) space today launched different types of products built around similar technology.

XOsoft entered the wide area file services (WAFS) space with WANSyncCD, based on its WANSync suite of replication products that includes CDP software (see Watch Out for WAFS and XOSoft Readies Replication). The CD stands for content distribution, and the new software uses WAFS to deliver and synchronize files among branch offices.

InMage Systems Inc.

pushed out its first product, a disaster recovery appliance called DR-Scout. InMage founder and CEO Kumar Malavalli -- who also founded switch company Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD) -- says DR-Scout has been shipping to a handful of customers in advance of its general availability. The product isnt the CDP product that Malavalli hinted at when he came out of stealth last September, but he says it will evolve into that (see Brocade Founder Has New InMage).

Why wait? The CDP line is already forming, based on products that claim to back up all data in an enterprise whenever a change is made. Alacritus Software Inc., Mendocino Software, Revivio Inc., and XOsoft are already in the game (see Revivio Revs Up With $25M and XOsoft Turns Back Time). Also, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) has already announced its intention of jumping into CDP, and Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) is believed to be working on products with partners (see Microsoft's Recovery Plan).

Malavalli says the companies already shipping CDP are premature. He believes customers want CDP, but don’t yet have the budgets for it, while disaster recovery is already in their 2005 budget.“We support continuous data protection and will release it in the future, when the market is ready,” he says. “A lot of vendors are talking about it, but the market is not ready. We don’t want to release a product that’s not being sold. That’s why what we’re doing is based on replication to start.”

XOsoft EVP of product strategy Gil Rapaport disagrees that nobody is using CDP. XOsoft’s CDP Enterprise Rewinder product recovers corrupted databases for Exchange, SQL, and Oracle, and on file servers. And CDP capability is built into the entire WANSync suite. Rapaport estimates that around 80 percent of XOsoft customers use CDP, including 30 Enterprise Rewinder customers. Revivio also claims it secured a handful of customers even before putting together a sales staff.

So is InMage missing out? Malavalli says InMage’s CDP will be worth waiting for because it takes a different approach. Most CDP products continually record data changes and store only the changes instead of the entire database. They also allow recovery from any point in the past instead of only at fixed points.

InMage software will roll back to an event -- such as the closing of the previous financial quarter -- rather than a specific time. Malavalli claims this will make backups more efficient while assuring that a company’s critical information will be protected. InMage is also going after smaller enterprises that aren’t likely to be early adopters.

One of InMage’s six paying customers -- CTO Matt Kesner of Fenwick and West LLP -- says his law firm will likely purchase InMage’s CDP when it is available. For now, Kesner uses DR-Scout to replicate data from Fenwick’s offices in Mountain View and San Francisco to a replication site in Sacramento. The setup is necessary because Mountain View and San Francisco sit on the same earthquake fault line, while Sacramento is out of harm’s way.“If we had an earthquake, both sites would be down,” Kesner says. “We do business by email, so we can’t be down.”

XOsoft is also moving into a new market that hasn’t taken off yet, but includes a handful of competitors that have already staked their claim. Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) entered the WAFS market by acquiring startup Actona for $82 million in June, and forged a NAS partnership with EMC based on its new WAFS appliance (see Cisco Acts on Actona and Cisco & EMC Close NAS Deal). Startups such as Constant Data Inc., DiskSites Inc., Riverbed Technology Inc., Signiant Corp., and Tacit Networks Inc. are also selling WAFS product.

But Rapaport says customers were already using WANSync products for its WAFS capability. All that’s changed is XOsoft is offering it as a standalone product.

“Talking to our customers, we found about 5 percent purchased our product not for disaster recovery, but for content distribution. So we decided to do both,” he says.

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch0