Storage upstart polishes copied-data slurping tool

Storage startup Actifio has updated its data-copy killing software, which deduplicates data by preventing redundant copies from being made in the first place. The firm's software tech virtualises a data storage system so that copies of data are pointers to master data and changed blocks rather than full files or databases - …

[Nate Amsden]

who uses it?

and for what specifically? what makes actifio better than alternatives? I asked this last time and nobody answered. Well one person did, privately who said everyone they talked to about actifio echoed similar comments to mine as well.

I even sent an email to one of their solution architects almost 3 weeks ago with my comments and questions and he never replied.

Yes I sat through their presentations last year - no I didn't find anything exciting. I think back over the past decade of any scenarios where I would think "Actifio would of been awesome for that". I can't think of a single one. Not so for most other products. Even those storage products I am not too hot on (e.g. Nimble) - I still can see use cases for them, even if they are not something I would use right now - I can see a market for them. I don't recognize a market opportunity for Actifio. The concept of reducing duplicate data is an interesting one but there are already many solutions for that, as the article mentions most happen at the storage system itself.

It really feels to me like Autonomy - in that they are really trying to pump and hype up their product in the hopes of being acquired for an inflated price. A bunch of execs from other startups that got acquired (3PAR certainly among them) who are chasing the ability to get acquired again.

If I'm wrong - please enlighten me, I'd love for my brain to stop hurting every time the name Actifio comes up.

[@miketrap]

Re: who uses it?

Mike Troiano here, I'm Actifio's CMO.

The short answer to your question is enterprises with 15TB-2PB of production data who find their storage requirements are growing too quickly; they're unable to ingest data fast enough to meet their internal SLA's; or the RTO or RPO objectives they can support using conventional technology just don't get the job done.

Most businesses today are dealing with a storage explosion. When you look closely at the data growth, you find production data growing at a linear rate, and "COPY DATA" - meaning data produced by all the systems that make copies of production (backup, snapshot, DR, BC, test & dev, analytics...) - growing geometrically. Copy data is what drives the storage explosion, because each of the systems that create it operate in a silo, creating copies without knowing what copies already exist. And while it's true there are plenty of systems out there to treat the symptoms of unchecked copy data growth (dedup, WAN optimization, etc.), Actifio is the first that cures the disease.

We do that by virtualizing some or all of the data protection apps I mentioned above. We replace those systems with a single one that makes a single, golden copy of whatever you'd like to protect in production, then stores incremental changes to it in such a way that you can recover anything instantly for up to 90% less than it would cost to do so through conventional means.

I hope that helps your brain stop hurting. If you'd like to know more, just ping me on Twitter @miketrap.