History 2003: Profile of Start-Up Intradot Labs

Company: Intradot Labs
Location: Vaulx-en-Velin, France
Born in: August2002
Investment: €1 million
Web: intradot.com
CEO: Nicolas Pasquier
Activity: The company has developed a low-cost network “Backup OS” for SMBs. It’s a 35MB personalized Linux-based OS, for backup only, that can be implemented on a small PC-compatible server on Ethernet. It can backup the data on all the clients connected, whether using Windows, Unix, Linux or MacOS, without adding any agent. The updated files are written normally on a first disk drive – or several of them – then compressed and copied to another, at which point they may be encrypted and duplicated on a removable device. The price is €1,500 for 5 clients, €1,970 for 10, including one year of maintenance.
Competitors: Adhersis, Arkeia, Dantz, Veritas
Comments: There is such a thing as a French storage start-up! A few other examples include SSP Storage Telecom, in its last gasp, low-end NAS company Synerway as well as Storagency. Intradot expects to sell 1,000 licenses for the first year. Its only problem is one of operating capital, if only for the sake of making a name for itself, and France is hardly the country where financing can be easily secured. Which is too bad, since the backup of small networks is surely a sector with potential, particularly in this case with a solution on HDDs, with better performance and lower costs than tape.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 187 on August 2003 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.