EMC offers new Centera for financial services

Computerworld - EMC Corp. today announced an upgraded version of its content-addressed storage server, Centera, that's aimed at financial services firms struggling with regulatory compliance issues created by a plethora of new laws dealing with e-mail retention and ensuring the authenticity of financial data.
The Compliance Edition of Centera is pricier than the previous model -- about $10 more per gigabyte of capacity -- but has improved software and hardware that allows IT administrators to set up strict retention and deletion rules for e-mail and documents, as well as added security with regard to access.
The server also uses Simple Network Management Protocol to remotely notify systems administrators of problems within the array.
At its most basic level, Centera incorporates inexpensive Advanced Technology Attachment drives to keep the price lower than high-end storage products but uses software that creates a unique 27-character identifier for each document or image stored in the system. A new file with a new identifier is created each time the data is changed, so the data can't be overwritten.
Roy Sanford, vice president of Content Addressed Storage at EMC in Hopkinton, Mass., said the Compliance Edition of Centera is 15% to 20% more expensive than previous models. The list price for an entry-level Centera system with 4TB of usable storage is $148,000.
The Compliance Edition of Centera keeps metadata about objects it's storing and uses that data to determine if requests to delete information should be honored. For example, if a request came in to delete an e-mail, Centera would first calculate whether the e-mail had reached the end of its regulated life cycle.
The array also uses a scanning algorithm to ensure that documents are deleted, proof of which is required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Brad Nisbet, an analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass., said regulations such as the SEC's rule on electronic-records retention and laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires CEOs to sign off on financial reports, is driving adoption of storage systems like Centera.
"The most significant change EMC made to Centera seems to me to be the fact that you can set the retention period," Nisbet said.
The newest model also allows administrators to set policies for e-mail and document retention at the object level, meaning an administrator can request that one set of e-mail be stored three years and another for longer or shorter periods, Sanford said.
EMC is using the latest 250GB IDE drives, vs. the 160GB IDE drives on previous models, for up to 32TB ofraw capacity.
Early adopters of the product include Scottrade, Commerzbank and Royal Bank of Canada.
Sanford said Centera has been shipping since last month and is both backward and forward compatible.

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