Permabit Pushes Pairings

Less than three months after its product debut, startup Permabit Inc. has sealed three partnership deals, as it seeks to penetrate enterprises with its content-addressed storage (CAS) wares.

Permabit will announce Monday a joint marketing arrangement to sell its Permeon CAS server, with iLumin, which makes email archiving and regulatory compliance software. Permabit's also inked a distribution deal with value-added distributor Avnet Hall-Mark, which will funnel Permabit products through its North American resellers.

Permabit announced in October an agreement with CommVault Systems Inc., which also makes email archiving software (see CommVault Pairs With Permabit). Permabit's also signed up as a development and solutions partner with Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ).

The deals highlight the trend that's pairing up disk-based storage systems with information lifecycle management (ILM) applications, particularly ones that archive email.

It's a matchup that makes sense: Enterprises have a growing need to comply with new regulations for data and email storage, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. At the same time, they're looking for cheaper, more efficient storage alternatives to traditional tape libraries or expensive optical disks.Permabit sees partnerships as key to success with enterprise customers. "The whole idea is to create a Tier 2 storage pool," says Rich Vito, the startup's COO. Vito says more teamups are on the way, but he's mum on the details.

Permabit probably shouldn't keep quiet for long, as competition is fierce. Its chief rival, EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), has made a priority of purchasing or aligning itself with software vendors to boost sales of its Centera disk-based repository (see EMC Swings Into Software Big Leagues and Centera Hits 300 Partners, 10 PBytes).

There's plenty of other partnership activity in this space, too: Examples include the purchase of Archive-It by Connected Corp. last month (see Connected Gets Into Archive); and the pairing of IXOS Software AG (Nasdaq: XOSY) with a range of players, including Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), Hitachi Ltd. (NYSE: HIT; Paris: PHA), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), and Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek) (NYSE: STK) (see Connected Gets Into Archive).

Permabit's strategy has been to tout its advantages aggressively, in David-and-Goliath fashion, to would-be buyers and partners. For example, the startup claims to have a better "total cost of ownership" than EMC (see Permabit Steps on the CAS), thanks to lower prices and use of NFS and Windows-based Common Internet File System (CIFS) interfaces. It says these interfaces obviate the need to use proprietary application programming interfaces (APIs) to link various applications with the storage software. Other players, it says, require these APIs.

EMC spokesman Rob Callery says applications can link to Centera through a gateway, without APIs. But customers, he says, often prefer the control that EMC's interfaces provide. Further, he says, since Centera doesn't work with specific file systems like NFS, manageability is simplified.At least one partner backs up Permabit's claims. ILumin spokesman Sam Erdheim says his company also has partnerships with EMC and Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) but likes what it's found in Permeon. "It offers disk-based storage at lower cost," he says.

It's unlikely that Permabit will go unchallenged for long. As noted above, EMC is bent on expanding its own partnerships in this space, and others, such as NetApp and now IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), aren't likely to sit back and cede sales to startups without a fight.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch