European data classification vendor targets U.S. Windows server market

Computerworld - Dataglobal, a vendor of data classification software based in Germany, has integrated its product with Windows Server 2008 R2 File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) and is targeting the U.S. market with its data archiving platform which is able to index files and then set up archival or deletion policies.

Focused primarily on the e-mail archiving marketplace, Dataglobal also announced the completion of its acquisition of fellow German data archiving vendor Inboxx.

Bernd Hoeck, vice president of marketing for Dataglobal, said the company has tightly integrated its data classification engine with Inboxx's unified archiving product, enabling it to expand the types of file data it can manipulate for deletion and storage capacity reclamation, eDiscovery or internal auditing purposes.

Dataglobal's dg suite offers data center administrators a method by which they can classify all types of unstructured data, ranging from Microsoft SharePoint files to e-mail, and index them.

Once the data is indexed, the software allows for automated policies to be set up to mark files for deletion or archival, or to set up chargeback policies for business units or perform eDiscovery for regulatory or internal auditing purposes.

"SharePoint's a huge area of concern to IT operations and Dataglobal has a really unique way to get control of that data because they have the classification piece, and you can set rules and policies within their platform," said Michael Peterson, President and Senior Analyst at Strategic Research Corp.

Unlike storage resource management (SRM) software of the past, which only reported on storage assets but did nothing to index the data for later use, Dataglobal's dg software suite is able to store metadata with the files and then use policies to manipulate the data.

"It's this ability to act on the analysis and ... that's all they've provided," Peterson said.

Dataglobal's dg suite has the ability to scan over half a billion data files per hour, said Hoeck. That speed enables administrators to regularly analyze the composition of their data storage.

The company has also qualified its software for use with the Electronic Discovery Reference Model 2.0, which offers standardized steps to break down electronic discovery into component steps.

"Unstructured content makes up 80% of the data in today's organizations, and it is the most difficult data to manage and leverage because it is stored across multiple systems such as content management, email and file systems with zero visibility into what it is," said Wolfgang Munz, CEO of Dataglobal.

Munz said the lack of insight into unstructured data in organizations results in not knowing what is or isn't valuable data.

"Using FCI with Dataglobal dg suite enables application and platform independent file classification to be extended to an entire enterprise, ensuring that the right data is maintained on the appropriate storage infrastructure commensurate with its priority to the business, delivering significant cost savings and capacity management capabilities to large enterprises," he said.