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Google made its second move into the information classification and management (ICM) space Monday, combining its enterprise search offerings with Kazeon’s ICM technology.
Kazeon will integrate its storage indexing and classification product, the Information Server IS1200, with Google’s enterprise search technology, and the start-up also joined the Google Enterprise Professional program. The result, the companies said, will be an “integrated search solution that stretches from Web-enabled knowledge repositories to the broad storage infrastructure, including file systems, archives and disk-to-disk backups.”
ICM is a file-level data classification and management technology that proponents say could make information lifecycle management (ILM) on the file level a reality.
Google’s first foray into the ICM space last September combined its enterprise search technology with StoredIQ’s ICM technology.
Kazeon marketing vice president Troy Toman said the difference between the two deals is that StoredIQ needed a search and indexing engine, while Kazeon provides its own.
“StoredIQ partnered with Google so that they could have a way to make their classification information searchable,” said Toman. “While Kazeon has search and indexing built into the IS1200, StoredIQ has no native support for search. When they do their integration with Google, they will feed all of their collected metadata into a Google Search Appliance and it will then be searchable.”
As a partner with Google, Toman said Kazeon will help extend the reach of search deeper into the storage infrastructure.
“To date, Google has primarily focused on indexing Web-enabled enterprise content,” Toman said. “They also focus on indexing a select number of high-quality documents. As such, their high-end eight-node search appliance maxes out in the tens of millions of documents. Kazeon handles native file system data and can search and index tens of millions of files with a single appliance. A cluster of Kazeon Information Servers can index hundreds of millions of files. This kind of reach becomes valuable when you are doing search for legal discovery or compliance applications.”
So how serious is Google about data management? “I would think they are dead serious,” said Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst at the Taneja Group.
“Google thrives on data,” Taneja said. “The more there is, the more their technology is needed. Search and access is their business. I think this is only the beginning. They know that they have little presence inside the enterprise. All that data is waiting to be searched and made accessible.”
Kevin Smith, program manager for Google Enterprise Professional, told Enterprise Storage Forum, “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google’s enterprise search products help complete this mission for business users and customers. While we will continue to add features to our products that enable more and more information to be searched, we can’t do it all. Our partners, like Kazeon, will continue to provide products and expertise that help users access the information they need for business.”
