Google Dips a Toe Into Data Management

StoredIQ, which automates classification and management of enterprise information, has joined the Google Enterprise Professional Program.

StoredIQ is one of four startups that compete in the information classification and management (ICM) space, a subset of information life cycle management (ILM), according to Taneja Group analysts. The others are Arkivio, Kazeon Systems and Njini. A fifth player, Scentric, is in stealth mode.

“The ICM category that we have defined requires an indexing engine,” said Taneja Group founder and consulting analyst Arun Taneja. “In some cases — Kazeon, for instance — the indexing engine is integral to the solution. For others, such as StoredIQ, the indexing engine can be anything they decide to integrate with. Google is what they have chosen. Correspondingly, Google wants to go into the enterprise. This is their avenue.”

The Google Enterprise Professional Program is intended to help customers get more value out of their Google enterprise search deployments by providing value-added services for Google enterprise products. The companies said that “Google’s mission of organizing information to make it accessible and useful, coupled with StoredIQ’s mission of making business information actionable, enables organizations to quickly find and easily manage the growing sea of internal information.”

“We’re looking forward to bringing the power of Google search to information classification and management,” Kevin Smith, program manager for Google Enterprise Professional, said in a statement.

“Applications like compliance, security, e-discovery and information lifecycle management (ILM) can be simultaneously supported while governance, risk and compliance policies are continuously enforced,” stated StoredIQ CEO Bob Fernander. “The Google Search Appliance, combined with industry-leading classification and policy enforcement, will redefine how enterprises use and manage their business information.”

The Google Search Appliance will be deployed in parallel with StoredIQ’s Information and Classification Management Platform to give Google enterprise customers ad-hoc search capabilities and automated policy-based actions, the companies said. By extracting concepts, facts, keywords and alphanumeric patterns, StoredIQ’s technology classifies, protects and manages information based upon content. Combined with Google’s search capabilities, the companies said they will give customers “a best-in-class solution for ‘Enterprise Search’ and ‘Information Classification and Management.'”

Fernander told Enterprise Storage Forum that classification is the first step in ILM and the key to making it work. StoredIQ will add that capability to Google’s enterprise search technology, allowing users to classify data by attributes such as name, Social Security number and medical terms that might make data regulated by HIPAA, for example, adding concepts and facts to keyword searches. Users can then take action on the data based on its classification.

Fernander sees Google as a potential partner to storage software firms such as EMC and Symantec/Veritas, rather than a competitor, with its enterprise search technology sitting on top of the underlying storage infrastructure.

Information on the Google Enterprise Professional program can be found at www.google.com/enterprise/gep.

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