Somehow overlooking the spelling of its own name, Njini says its aim is to eliminate unstructured data chaos. Running on an Intel appliance, the company’s software presents itself as an in-band NAS head which collects meta data about corporate data.
It then eliminates duplicate data via a content checksum, and moves data between storage tiers based on that metadata. Njini said its system makes decisions about data location on tiers by referring to more metadata than conventional ILM or HSM systems.
The software uses an abstracted file system, and moves data by plugging into array functions via a set of software adaptors. It has been used to front-end data stored on Netapp, EMC, Copan and other arrays.
The company’s website quotes ESG analyst Nancy Hurley, who describes Njini’s software are going far beyond current ILM systems, and says that it profiles data to enable a range of compliance, access control or chargeback policies.
Some of this may sound like content management software such that from EMC-Documentum. Njini CTO Phil Tee said however that end-users are forced to interact with Documemtum’s software, but that they are not even aware of Njini’s software.
One of our beta customers has called us Documentum-light, because of the lightness of our implementation, Tee said.
So far four customers have deployed Njini’s beta software. Based in Richmond, England, the company has raised $6m of VC in two rounds. Tee was co-founder of both Micromuse, and RiverSoft.
