Index Engines Launches New Enterprise Search Architecture

Introducing The First Enterprise Search Solution That Plugs Into The SAN And Indexes Unstructured Data During Back Up

Holmdel, NJ - March 15, 2005 - Index Engines today announced the commercial availability of the first enterprise search appliance that indexes data inline with the existing backup process. Unlike traditional enterprise search solutions that crawl networks and desktops in order to find data, the Index Engines Appliance sits in the path of the data backup and transparently indexes data as it is flows through the storage network. The product is an affordable and rapidly deployable solution aimed at helping a company’s knowledge workers find and leverage the terabytes of files and email that flow through their networks.

“The key requirement of any information management solution is frictionless access to all of the valuable information scattered throughout the enterprise. Index Engines has significantly simplified this often daunting task with their unique approach,” says Jonathan Spira, CEO and Chief Analyst of Basex.

“By deploying inline indexing into existing storage area networks, IT departments will dramatically increase the ROI of their existing data backup process by adding sophisticated search capabilities at no additional operational expense,” says Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst of Taneja Group.

“Our goal at Index Engines is to mainstream enterprise search. We want to provide our customers with solutions that easily and seamlessly integrate into their existing network infrastructures and immediately unlock for them the vast knowledge residing in their unstructured data,” said Tim Williams, CEO and founder of Index Engines.

The Index Engines Appliance re-architects enterprise search by shifting the indexing of unstructured data off the overburdened data network and onto the storage network, where file and email are collected and archived using existing backup procedures. A solution that sits inline on the storage network, relying on this network to find updated data, eliminates the complexities inherent with traditional enterprise search solutions. Typical enterprise search solutions implement network and desktop crawlers in order to find data; additionally many require modification or copying of this data into specialized repositories.

The Index Engines Appliance was architected to be a highly performant, and efficient indexing engine. The average performance specifications of the appliance are as follows:

• Indexing speed – 3.5 million words per second. Microsoft Office documents are processed at 70 MB per second. *
• Index size – as unstructured data is indexed, an index consisting of 8% stored on the appliance. As an example, for every terabyte of unstructured data, the appliance requires 80 gigabytes of storage. *
• Backup latency – the appliance was designed to not significantly delay the backup window. Average latency resulting from insertion of the appliance into the backup process is 5% or three minutes for every hour of backup. *
• Query speed – The appliance supports up to 500 queries per second. *
• File capacity – the ES-100 model indexes up to 4 million documents, and the ES-200 model indexes 8 million documents. Appliances can be clustered for multi-tape drive environments. Up to 64 appliances can be clustered providing fully integrated search results.

The benefits of an enterprise search solution are significant. With the volume of files and email growing at exponential rates, the average user has become overwhelmed with the simple task of finding and leveraging the knowledge contained in the enterprise. The Index Engines Appliance indexes terabytes of files and email and provides users with a simple web based search tool in order to enter simple or advanced keyword searches to find what they need in seconds. The Index Engines Appliance supports the most common file types including, Microsoft Office files, text, html, Adobe PDF, compressed zip files and more. Additionally a beta version that includes support for Microsoft Exchange email as well as PST files is also available.

The Index Engines Appliance is available in two models. The ES-100 model supports the indexing of four million files and sells for $29,500. The ES-200 model supports eight millions documents and sells for $39,500. Both models include one year warranty and maintenance.