Mimosa Exits Stealth Mode With E-mail Archiving Appliance

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based storage start-up this week unveiled its Mimosa NearPoint appliance aimed at solving e-mail management issues related to mailbox and message recovery, disaster recovery, e-mail archiving and search, said T.M. Ravi, co-founder and CEO.

Because the NearPoint uses hard disks for backup, recovery of Exchange data can be immediately done with two mouse clicks, said Ravi.

The appliance also offers continuous data protection whereby any changes to the data are captured in near-real time, including Exchange transaction log files as they are being generated, he said. Because those log file copies are applied to the backed up copy of the e-mail database, the result is the ability to recover Exchange data almost immediately if the database becomes corrupted, he said.

The NearPoint also speeds up the restoration of Exchange information by restoring the database, all mailboxes and individual messages in a single pass, Ravi said. It also allows a user to restore individual messages without the intervention of a database administrator, he said.

The appliance can be installed and ready to work within two hours, said Ravi. It installs with zero footprint on the Exchange server and uses standard Microsoft software, so there is no extra software needed, he said. Also included are default data retention and other policies that allow customers to start using the appliance immediately and while giving them time to develop their own policies, he said.

This initial version of the NearPoint appliance is focused on e-mail management, but future versions will focus on other types of unstructured and semi-structured data such as documents and VOIP, Ravi said.

The company is looking to leverage the channel to bring its appliances to the market, and is looking for Exchange integrators with experience in deployment and servicing of the application, as well as solution providers with tape backup and archiving experience, said Ravi.

Mimosa's channel program offers two tiers depending on how deeply the partner can support its products. It is offering a deal registration program to protect its partners' margins, as well as sales and technical training and certification, he said.

Rand Morimoto, president and CEO of Convergent Computing, an Oakland, Calif.-based solution provider that has been involved in beta projects with Mimosa, called NearPoint the best solution he has ever seen for e-mail archiving.

"People have years and years of e-mails stored," Morimoto said. "Mimosa scrapes the old e-mails off and puts them on a secondary server to keep for however many years they need them. The don't have to keep the e-mails on their primary server."

NearPoint offers a simple installation, said Morimoto. "Other solutions require agents or the loading of software," he said. "The last thing people want is more agents and drivers on their systems. With Mimosa, just set it up, and in couple hours it's working. No clients to install."

Mimosa was founded in 2003, supported by $6.5 million in venture capital funding and $4 million in debt financing, Ravi said. He said the company will need one more round of financing before it can break even.