Deepfile

Deepfile Austin, Texas

Bluewave Networks Cassatt Cast Iron Systems Convoq Deepfile Mirra PanGo Networks Strix Systems TurnTide Vontu

Location:Austin, Texas

Company name: Reflects the company’s desire to create a deep file metadata repository for content management.

How did the company start? In May 2001, serial entrepreneur Jeff Bone teamed with two collaborators from Clickfeed.com, a news aggregation service he created; plus Rudy Rouhana, founder of WebTaggers, a now-defunct software company; and Jeff Erramouspe, who had been a fellow at Austin Venture Labs; to create an enterprise file management system. All founders hold executive management positions.

Funding: $2 million, in one round closed in April 2002.

CEO: Bob Fernander was most recently vice president of business development at Motive, a service management software provider. He also has held marketing and sales positions with Surgient and Compaq.

Product: Deepfile Auditor and Enforcer enterprise file management appliances.

Enterprise file management made easyEnterprise networks are known to be wastelands of junk files – nearly one-third of the files on a corporate network are redundant or haven’t been accessed in a long time, Deepfile founders say. Imagine how more efficient network and storage operations would be if those duplicated or outdated files could be weeded out.

Deepfile has developed two appliances with a goal of ridding the network of these files and optimizing storage capacity. The appliances run the Deepfile Auditor and Deepfile Enforcer file management system software, available since March 2003. Deepfile Auditor monitors the network, assigning a metadata reference to and reporting on files that meet user-definable criteria. Deepfile Enforcer then deletes the files or migrates them to less-expensive storage.

The appliances, which have Gigabit Ethernet connections, compete with storage resource management (SRM) software from vendors such as Arkivio and Softek. Besides its appliance approach, Deepfile differentiates itself by focusing on the Windows Common Information File System, the Unix Network File System installed on file servers and network-attached storage devices. Many other SRM products focus on block-oriented storage-area network data or application-specific issues.

Deepfile counts Medline, Polycom and Vignette among users of its year-old products, which are priced on the amount of storage they manage. The Auditor starts at $7,500 for 1T byte of capacity. The Enforcer starts at $15,000 for 1T byte of capacity.

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