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(SMBs) and small enterprises called DigiLibe, which provides data reduction, security and compliance features.DigiLibe represents a new direction for Digitiliti. Until now, the St. Paul, MN-based company has served as a data backup service provider using Asigra software. It is following the lead of ROBObak, a former Asigra service provider that developed its own backup software two years go. But while Digitiliti has developed its own software to power DigiLibe, it still uses Asigra for its DigiBak backup service.
Digitiliti claims DigiLibe handles data deduplication and compression, continuous data protection (CDP), content indexing, encryption, and automated tiering plus compliance features such as content indexing, policy management, content search, and end-user recovery of files. The ambitious product combines an on-premise appliance and off-site archive.
Digitiliti vice president Ken Peters said DigiLibe's purpose is to "protect, control, store, secure, and archive" data.
DigiLibe consists of three components: client agents that install on PCs or servers, an Information Director appliance that serves as the primary file server and the Archive Information Storage that sits at Digitiliti's data center.
Files are saved to the Information Director. After data is compressed and encrypted, it's sent off to the archive. Peters says DigiLibe captures metadata when files are created, and does full content indexing when data is processed. Active data stays at the customer site, and other data gets moved offsite. For compliance, administrators set retention and deletion policies on a global, group, or file level.
The Information Director comes in 3 TB and 12 TB configurations, while the off-site data store can scale as high as customers want. Peters says DigiLibe will eventually scale into an enterprise product, but is currently aimed at SMBs and SMEs.
DigiLibe is priced at $100 per client side client, plus $20,000 for a 3 TB Information Director and $3 per gigabyte archived (after deduplication and compression).
As an unproven product looking to do so many things, it's hard to say how well DigiLibe works or scales until Digitiliti comes up with reference customers to vouch for it. Analyst Arun Taneja of the Taneja Group said Digitiliti may be able to ride a cloud wave, but faces a tough transition from a VAR to a supplier that develops its own technology.
"Their timing is good – everybody is looking at cloud services," he said. "Archiving is a hot space, and the SMB/SME market is wide open. A new company can get in the game. But reselling somebody's product is different than creating a product and selling that product to the market. It's not an easy transition. The jury will be out on that for awhile, whether this company has made that transition."