In September, Mountain View, Calif.- based Arkivio, Inc. began shipping its ARKIVIOT auto-stor, which it positions as a new class of automated storage management software that integrates into existing storage environments and dynamically manages an enterprise's data and storage resources. ARKIVIOT recognizes that not all data has the same value to a company and its value changes over time. ARKIVIOT auto-stor is built around a Policy Automation Engine (PAE) that analyzes data and storage resources to generate Data Value Scores and Storage Value Scores. The ARKIVIO PAE uses this intelligence to direct the right data to the most appropriate storage device and volume. It can be used for DAS, NAS, or SAN.
Nancy Marrone, an analyst with Enterprise Storage Group, is generally impressed with the product. She says that most SRM vendors currently report on the use of storage resources by file type, but don't determine how valuable that data is to the organization. Nor can they take any action on the data itself (with the exception of some hard quota managers which will delete files).
In contrast, the Arkivio product can weigh data value in real time and take action based on the relative importance of the data to the organization. The action may be to move the data to secondary storage or to set it up for archive. "That is currently a clear differentiator," she said
Marrone noted that there are a few companies with the ability to move data based on criteria (IBM Tivoli,
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Legato) but neither of them actually do the value weighting. "The data is moved based on "static" definitions like the age of the file or number of replicates," she said.
Michael Karp, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates, offers a more cautious take on ARKIVIOT, pointing out that it is policy based and its performance will depend largely on the quality of those policies and their implementation. Also, he notes, the current iteration is for Windows and Solaris only, limiting its usefulness for many organizations.
Carolyn DiCenzo, chief analyst for Storage Management Software at Gartner Group, weighs in with her set of concerns. "I disagree with their positioning," she said. "We are in the process of reviewing all the players in that market," she said. "They want to be an SRM vendor -- Arkivio will probably not rate highly in the SRM space but could very well rate highly in the HSM space," she added.
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About the author: Alan Earls is a freelance writer in Franklin, MA.
This was first published in November 2002