Persist Targets Email Storage

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Persist Technologies emerged from stealth mode last week with the unveiling of its AppStor software solution, which the company claims provides secure storage and retrieval of data from any location at any time.

AppStor “effectively addresses major issues associated with the growth, storage, and retrieval of enterprise content and reference information, including email, office documents, and rich digital media,” the company says.

Persist AppStor for Enterprise Email is the company’s first out-of-the-box solution. The appliance provides support for major email applications, such as Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, and others. It offers real-time email and attachment capture and secure storage; immediate identity- or policy-based access to all content; ease of administration and integration; a reduction in the need for backup operations; reduced demand for email servers; and self-contained storage management capabilities, alleviating the need for third-party storage management software tools.

“Persist offers a unique, permanent, and truly valuable solution to the email storage problem,” says Sara Radicati, president and founder of analyst firm The Radicati Group. “Enterprises that deploy the Persist solution will enjoy instant relief to the email storage crisis, along with a more efficient email system operating at a significantly lower TCO. A 10,000-user company could expect to save an average of 53% per year over a three-year period.”

According to Radicati, the average corporate user currently sends and receives an average of 120 email messages each day. The rising volume of email is the leading storage need. And with increased regulatory enforcement and corporate litigation, records must be securely archived and made easily accessible.

Email Important in Litigation, PwC Says

PricewaterhouseCoopers claims that email currently accounts for about half of all electronic information requested in litigation, yet according to Persist, many organizations would not be able to recover email if required for legal or regulatory discovery.

Radicati reports that 86% of global corporations consider email archiving very important. The firm projects that by 2007, revenues for email archiving vendors will exceed $1 billion.

Persist says it gives organizations rapid compliance with SEC and NASD regulations that specify requirements for corporate records retention. The Enterprise Storage Group believes records retention represents a market opportunity of more than $6 billion over the next four years. There are more than 10,000 regulations that govern a variety of industries, the majority of which impact data storage, among them HIPAA for healthcare, SEC Rules 17a-3 and 4 for financial services, the Department of Defense 5015.2-Standard for government and military organizations, and the 21 CFR Part 11 for life sciences.

“Persist AppStor raises the bar in intelligent, simplified content storage,” says Steve Kenniston, ESG technology analyst. “AppStor delivers a robust, scalable solution for companies that want to make their information assets accessible and rapidly retrievable. Persist is tackling the demands, head on, of the exploding enterprise reference information market, while meeting regulatory requirements set forth by SEC and NASD organizations.”

Reference information is the fastest-growing category of storage, ESG says, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 92% through 2005. Currently, 37% of cumulative storage capacity is dedicated to reference information; by the end of 2005, it is expected to represent 54% of newly created information, surpassing the volume of non-reference information (such as databases and transactional data). As the proportion of reference information continues to grow, it will become the largest contributor to the increase in storage costs, including hardware, software, and system management resources.

“Persist AppStor for Enterprise Email is designed to make storage, retrieval, and management of messages simple,” says Gary Lyng, Persist’s vice president for product management and alliances. “The solution is designed for corporate executives, compliance and legal officers, and IT departments that are audited or measured on their ability to safely and securely maintain records, documents, and communications for long periods of time, and in a way that makes them instantly retrievable. To do this effectively and cost-efficiently, there’s no other solution that meets all of these requirements.”

SmartCell Technology Drives the AppStor Engine

Persist says its SmartCell technology provides a scalable, distributed computer system of self-contained, all-inclusive data repositories that increases in power with increasing data. The company claims to offer true application centricity, which means that its products automatically recognize, read, and interoperate with any application used to create digital content, and that its products are compatible with a wide range of applications through support of open standards such as SOAP, SMTP, IMAP4, and HTTP(S). The company also uses server blade technology, Grid computing architecture, and autonomic self-healing features such as built-in mirroring and fault-tolerance.

Persist reports its solutions are especially suited for the financial services, government, healthcare, pharmaceutical, insurance, and enterprise technology market sectors. Current customers include E*TRADE and the U.S. Army.

“Persist AppStor has proven to be a high-performance, fast, accurate, reliable, and scalable solution for searching and retrieving content,” says LTC Hoppe, U.S. Army ALTESS. “When searching by keyword the volumes of email and attachments on our network, Persist AppStor locates the information within seconds. This capability allows us to have access to data and email even when our mail server is inaccessible. It gives us the capability to significantly reduce the number of servers used for mail and document storage.”

Persist has forged alliances with OEMs of server blade technology, including Hewlett-Packard, RLX Technologies, IBM, and others. The company has also partnered with outsourced archiving provider Zantaz, and with Akonix and IMlogic for instant messaging integration. Persist is funded by ComVentures, ArrowPath Venture Capital, Red Rock Ventures, and Athena.

“Persist has approached storage from a fresh perspective, with breakthrough design and technology that simplifies the storage environment and its processes,” says Persist CEO Paul O’Brien. “And ultimately, it provides users with exactly what they want and need — immediate and unfettered access to enterprise content.”

Persist AppStor for Enterprise Email is available starting at $45,000 per terabyte, with quantity discounts available.

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Paul Shread
Paul Shread
eSecurity Editor Paul Shread has covered nearly every aspect of enterprise technology in his 20+ years in IT journalism, including an award-winning series on software-defined data centers. He wrote a column on small business technology for Time.com, and covered financial markets for 10 years, from the dot-com boom and bust to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. He holds a market analyst certification.

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