Quick Takes: Druva, Eucalyptus Systems, Pica8Quick Takes: Druva, Eucalyptus Systems, Pica8

I have the opportunity to get briefings on new products in the IT industry. Here are highlights from several meetings I had in the past couple of weeks, along with a brief reaction on each.

Druva Adds E-Discovery To Endpoint Backup

What: Druva had added e-discovery capabilities to its backup software. Druva’s inSync is an agent for endpoint devices, including PCs, laptops, phones, and tablets. The agent encrypts and backs up data into Druva’s cloud service, which is built on AWS. The backup agent also includes DLP capabilities and minimal sync-and-share features.

The 5.4 release adds e-discovery features, including federated search that lets administrators scan endpoints for potentially relevant data; and legal holds that preserve files, documents and other content. Druva says it can also export data into e-discovery analysis tools from Reccomind and Access Data. The company did not provide pricing. The e-discovery features will be an additional cost on top of the base package.

Quick Take: E-discovery is complex, and the failure to properly collect and preserve relevant data can have serious repercussions. The combination of endpoint backup and e-discovery in one package makes sense because it gives organizations a handle on data that can be tricky to collect because mobile devices are often outside administrative control. However, organizations have to carefully verify whether a product like inSync can meet the stringent requirements of e-discovery.

Eucalyptus Systems 4.0 Promises More Scalable Private Clouds

What: Eucalyptus 4.0 is open-source orchestration software for compute, storage and network resources to build private clouds. It supports KVM and VMware hypervisors. The company also promises tight compatibility with AWS APIs for hybrid deployments with Amazon.

The company’s 4.0 release promises to simplify private cloud growth. Enhancements include support for scale-out object storage, and a new feature called Edge Networking, which decentralizes the control plane for the network overlay and shares it among multiple edge nodes.

Quick Take: Eucalyptus says its newest release offers greater scalability, but the company didn’t provide a clear answer when I asked how scalable it was, or what compute or storage limits customers encountered in previous versions. On the plus side, pricing is simple: the company charges an annual enterprise subscription per server in the customer’s private cloud. When I asked if they meant per VM or per core, they said they meant per physical machine. That’s admirably straightforward.

Pica8 Supports OpenFlow 1.4

What: Pica8, which makes the PicOS switch operating system for white box hardware, has announced support for the OpenFlow 1.4 specification. Pica8 claims to be the first company to support the 1.4 spec. Pica8’s software runs on a variety of ODM devices from Accton, Alpha Networks, Foxconn and Quanta Computer. The company says its switches work with a variety of controllers, including OpenDaylight and Ryu.

In addition to support for OpenFlow 1.4, Pica8 also announced several PicOS enhancements, including memory optimization to double the number of TCAM entries, and a GUI to speed setup of OVSDB (Open vSwitch Database), a protocol for managing implementations of the Open vSwitch virtual switch.

Quick Take: The upstarts in the white-box switch market have to work hard to snatch market share not just from incumbents, but from their white-box brethren. By rolling out support for the 1.4 version of OpenFlow when the rest of the market is on 1.3, Pica8 gets credit for being ahead of the curve, and may attract the attention of organizations that are committing to OpenFlow and want the newest capabilities as soon as possible.