Persist Rolls Out App Designed To Archive Reference Data

The software, unveiled Tuesday, can be used to create an appliance for the active archiving of secure storage and instant retrieval of data from any location when needed, company executives said.

Instead of focusing on moving and sharing data, as offerings from most SAN and NAS vendors do, the Persist AppStor application looks at the data, its metadata and the actual content, said Gary Lyng, vice president of product management and alliances at Persist, based here. The product is aimed at what Lyng called reference data, or data that doesn't change once it's stored, such as e-mail, voice records, video or Microsoft Office documents.

Persist AppStor is installed on a standard server, including blade servers, to create a scalable appliance, Lyng said. It has been certified to work with servers from Hewlett-Packard, Dell Computer, IBM and RLX. Multiple servers or server blades can be connected as a single Smart Cell with mirroring, fault tolerance and other availability features, he said.

When data is saved using Persist AppStor, it's digitally signed, turned into an XML object and compressed, Lyng said. The data is divided into the metadata and the payload, which is the actual image of the data. Users can then perform searches using any keyword in the metadata or payload, he said. For instance, e-mails can be searched via the customer's Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes application.

Persist AppStor meets regulatory compliance requirements, Lyng said. Early adopters of the technology include vertical markets such as finance, insurance, health care and government, he added.

Although the application was released quietly last November--and has been adopted by customers such as eTrade and the U.S. Army--Persist is now looking to build both its customer base and channel base, Lyng said. The company is seeking solution providers that have strong messaging and storage experience, as well as a nationwide practice, he said.

"We are not ready yet for mass distribution," Lyng said.

Persist AppStor is priced at about $45,000 per usable Tbyte of data, according to the company.