10 start-ups to watch: Revivio

Location: Lexington, Mass.

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Location: Lexington, Mass.

What does the company offer? The Continuous Protection System 1200 appliance, which lets companies restore data instantly and recover applications from any point in time, minutes or hours ago.

How did the company get its start? Michael Rowan (CTO) and Kevin Rodgers (director of engineering), who are storage veterans from StorageCom and EMC , formed Revivio in October 2001 to develop the next generation of data protection and recovery products.

How did the company get its name? From revive I/O, which infers the ability to restore information in the event of a disk loss in just seconds, rather than the hours or days it normally takes.

How much funding does the company have? $55.5 million, including $25 million in a third round closed in January. Backers include Bessemer Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, Eastward Capital Partners, Flagship Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, Lighthouse Capital Partners and Nomura International.

Who's leading the company? Paul Lewis, formerly managing director of the World Economic Forum, CEO of Essential.com and an IBM consultant.

Who's using the product? Forbes.com, Jeffries and Co., and the University of New Mexico, among others.

Why is the company worth watching? In February, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) recognized continuous data protection technology with the formation of a CDP special interest group. Storage vendors, old and new, are vying for a piece of the action.

Revivio faces competition from fellow start-ups such as Mendocino Software and Mimosa Systems. And established vendors such as Microsoft and Symantec , which acquired Veritas Software, are planning or already offer CDP products. Microsoft's upcoming Data Protection Manager and Symantec's LiveState Recovery let users recover lost data. Other CDP variants require IT managers to recover data.

Revivio's Continuous Protection System 1200 appliance differs from competitive products in that it is intended to retrieve block-based database and other data for enterprise-size data centers. Mendocino's TimeSpring is focused on recovering application environments, while Mimosa's NearPoint is designed for recovering Microsoft Exchange and in the future SQL Server and SharePoint applications.

Revivio is a well-positioned pioneer in the nascent CDP market. It is one of the founding members of the SNIA's CDP special interest group. Other members include Alacritus Software, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, InMage Systems, Network Appliance and XOsoft.

< Previous start-up profile: Ping Identity | Next start-up profile: Univa >

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