Acaveo Closed Doors

Acaveo, Inc., based in Ottawa, Canada, and founded in 2012 by Ron Mc Donell, also CEO of Avaleris, closed its doors despite being in file analysis, a growing market but probably not enough to sustain its activity.

The web site is unreachable – the domain name is now owned by Avaleris –  and last update was in February 9, 2017.

The information was confirmed by Geoff Bourgeois, former CTO, and Greg Campbell, former chief architect, now co-founders and respectively CEO and CTO of HubStor, also in Ottawa.

Acaveo, an ISV dedicated to information governance, was an active player in the file analysis landscape and has tried to extend the product line with the 4.0 release announced in February 2016. This 4.0 release unveiled nView for an inventory of unstructured data and insights with identity and access rights, nAct for content migration, cleanup and classification and nDepth a search capability aligned with PCI requirements.

In 2015, Acaveo announced that is was working with NetApp to provide customers with file analysis solutions to help better manage unstructured corporate data.

This closure confirms that file analysis, as a product and especially if a company owns only this function, is really risky and can’t sustain a business for a long time.

At the same time, other vendors pretty well established have extended their product line to go beyond this service.

This news illustrates if needed that file analysis is not a product but more a feature offered by more comprehensive solutions. For instance an HSM/tiering solution requires such intelligence to understand all files, to collect users’ behaviors and access patterns. Check firms like Komprise, Grau Data, DataGlobal, QStar, Versity, Seven10, SGI, Point Systems, Quantum or Oracle. A player like Varonis has understood that and also extends its original service or Kazoup adds services around that file intelligence.

As products got limitations even if they’re pretty good, it explained some M&As moves. StoredIQ has been acquired by IBM in 2013. It also reminds me SRM (Storage Resource Management) wave many years ago, where many players got acquired and file analysis really mimics that era. To name a few, remember W.Quinn with StorageCentral acquired by Precise then Veritas, Astrum by EMC, CreekPath Systems by Opsware or HighGround swallowed by Sun Micrososytems. As a function, it could explain also DataGravity’s difficulties and recent changes.

Again this function is a fundamental service to better understand unstructured data environment but, as a function, it belongs to a more comprehensive solution and many tentative were started around ILM, DLP, eDiscovery, or Compliance. It looks like a deja vue…