Autonomy Sparks Arcpliance

November 1, 2009

Autonomy has been busy. After receiving a pat on the back from IDC, Autonomy introduced its digital archiving appliance. Appliances apply toaster think to complex software tasks. For example, if you want to crunch real time flows of financial information, Exegy has an appliance for you. If you want to index the data written by an enterprise back up system, give Index Engines a jingle. If you want to index an organization’s content, ring up Adhere Solutions and get a Google Search Appliance. You get the idea. Complex task encapsulated in a search toaster.

Autonomy’s appliance, described by CMSWire in “Autonomy Releases Arcpliance, IDOL-Based Digital Archiving Appliance”, is “a new tool to further enhance their established cloud-based and on-premise archiving solutions.” As I worked through the glowing write up, I noted this interesting passage:

While their Intelligent Digital Operating Layer (IDOL) automatically “understands” how to manage each piece of content, Arcpliance works to archive it without the headache. Developed as a response to shortcomings in Storage Area Networks, Arcpliance utilizes Autonomy’s special split-cell architecture. The grid-based design is reportedly “infinitely scalable” and also combines the power of Autonomy’s Digital Safe, making the tool enterprise friendly.

What I think this means is that Autonomy’s software is smart, a bit like an educated, context sensitive, intuitive human analyst. Autonomy’s approach eliminates the problems that other types of digital archiving systems bring to the table. The smart software uses a “split cell architecture”, an approach with which I have zero experience. The Autonomy solutions—which runs in an organization’s data center, on premises or from the cloud—uses a “grad based design”. Again I lack the expertise to comment on this approach. However, I understand that the method is “infinitely scalable.” I do recall learning in 8th grade math class that the notion of infinite is pretty big and thinking about infinity can drive some folks up a wall, an infinite wall I might add. So Autonomy’s ability to deploy a system that is infinitely scalable raises a bit of a logical pickle but I think that phrase is a bit of over enthusiastic purple prose. If not, the Arcpliance is brushing shoulders with the big $\aleph$ . I would imagine the demo is interesting indeed.

More information is available from Autonomy.

Stephen Arnold, November 1, 2009

The Department of Agriculture needs to know I received no fodder for this article.

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Cloud computing, Enterprise, Marketing, News, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.