Aparavi File Protect & Insight is being sold as a separate solution from their original Active Archive, because the use cases are so fundamentally different.
Multi-cloud data management startup Aparavi has announced that they have leveraged the technology of their core Active Archive platform to create Aparavi File Protect & Insight [FPI] for multi-cloud file backup and long-term retention.
“We are now spinning out of our threat engine a product for file protection, based on a more narrow use case,” said Victoria Grey, Aparavi’s Chief Marketing Officer.
“Our Archive-as-a-Service is still very much alive and active, but we have built enough differentiation to have a unique product in File Protection and Insight,” said Jon Calmes, Vice President of Business Development at Aparavi. “This is a noisy, crowded market, but we saw that no one in it was investing in how to ingest data. We saw a fundamental sea change in how data was being aggregated with unstructured data. Aparavi solves that problem of knowing what you have in your secondary storage – metadata as well as content.”
This ability to search metadata as well as content, by utilizing Aparavi Data Awareness from Active Archiv,e is the key to providing intelligence and insight, as well as global security, search, and access.
“Customers tell us that compliance tools still miss data because stuff is added in in the fields in places it shouldn’t be, and didn’t show up till there’s an audit,” Calmes said. It lets files be identified based on individual words, phrases, dates, file types, and patterns.
“Aparavi FPI takes the intelligence of our engine, and applies it to file protection,” Calmes said. “It looks for sensitive data, and classifies it as Personally Identifiable Information, right from the get-go from the source. The data is stored with the value for discovery, and we provide automated rules that can be applied from the workstation all the way to the file server.”
Aparavi FPI uses pattern matching and metadata to allow on-premises index provides to provide near instant search results.
“The index is content-aware, and you can search against it,” Calmes said. “Our data discovery builds an index when we build our backups, and no matter where data is stored, we will give a global file system view. For compliance purpose such as with the California Consumer Privacy Act, we can find individuals based on where their names or likenesses show up – and give tools to remove it out of secondary storage.”
Permissions are set on a role basis for control over file access, and file versioning is maintained for copy management. Files are encrypted both in-motion during file transfers, and at-rest in the target storage, using industry standard AES 256 encryption.
Aparavi is also stressing Aparavi FPI’s abilities against ransomware because of its ability to provide an immutable copy of data that provides a second line of defense.
“It can create a percentage threshold if certain percentage of the backup data changes, which can be an indicator of something bad happening,” Calmes indicated. “We can prevent overwriting with bad data because it creates a second. immutable copy. Even if our software appliance is nuked, we can retrieve it. We can also restore files quickly with extremely rapid granular recovery, because you can mount the drive from the index, so you don’t have to go into cloud to create that.”
Calmes emphasized that Aparavi FPI is designed as a complementary solution to enhance existing data protection solutions.
“My goal isn’t to rip out Veeam, or Zerto, or Datto, but to be used in conjunction with them,” he stated. “Our goal is to supplement them, and provide a secondary line of defense for ransomware recovery, as well as a lot more data intelligence on data in the backup.”
Given the overlap with the technology of Archive Anywhere, why sell Aparavi FPI as a second offering at all, rather than just extending the initial one with a new use case?
“Archive and backup are two different tasks, and truly are different markets,” Calmes said. “In Q1, we will do a version update of Archive Anywhere that will further position it as a data platform for governance.”
Calmes also said channel partners, who are the solution’s route to market, has also requested that Aparavi FPI be a distinct offering.
“They were already using our platform for backup,” he emphasized. “We are launching it as a dedicated product because of their feedback. More customers were asking them for backup style features. So for them, the draw was data identification as a service. Selling it as an archive tool into this market was difficult because of the use cases.”
Aparavi FPI is available now.
“We have been quietly selling it in the background, and have been doing some channel-centric shows with it to help around the messaging,” Calmes noted.
