Network Engines (NEI)

[blueskywaves]

Here's the Centera in action, Raymond.

Centera's software (CentraStar) is based on the FilePool technology that EMC acquired for less than $50M in April 2001.

One of the founders of FilePool is also one of the founders of HyperTrust which operates this Centera-based ASP (application service provider).

http://www.send2store.com/Home.aspx

More background material on FilePool from EMC Belgium:

Eleven years ago the Belgian company Wave Research
was founded to develop FileWave, a sophisticated
software distribution product for Apple Macintosh
networks. The product was highly successful, selling
more than half a million licenses worldwide. In 1996, a
private funding round gave the company the opportunity
to launch a new design effort to deliver a next generation,
cross-platform, Internet and Intranet-centric
file distribution product. The company introduced this
technology under the name FilePool in December 1998.

A couple months later, Wave Research sold the rights
of FileWave to its long time European distributor in
order to focus its efforts on developing FilePool and
derivative products. After another round of venture
capital financing was completed, the company was
renamed FilePool, Inc. and its focus was on developing
storage server technology. As the Internet boom took
off the company evolved into a storage service
provider.

Filepool's online service EZ-Attach was an instant
success attracting millions of users within a few
months. When these users posted their documents on
a central storage platform over the Internet, they
received a unique, content-based key to retrieve their
information afterwards at anytime and any place. EMC
recognised the potential of the patented technology
and the proven scalability of the system.

EMC acquired FilePool in April 2001. At that time,
FilePool employed about 35 people and had its
headquarters in Sint-Katelijne-Waver in Belgium, with
smaller offices in Paris, Frankfurt, and San Francisco.
EMC quickly made the decision to transform the FilePool
team into an R&D unit focusing on the product development
of Centera, a perfect marriage of EMC's hardware
storage expertise and FilePool's innovative software.

FilePool was renamed the EMC Belgian Development
Group (EMC BDG) and grew its core development team
to 55 people. Today the organisation is structured in
four main units, two development teams (one for core
storage development, the other for interfaces, tools
and manageability), a quality assurance team and a
publishing and documentation team. Centera's
management, hardware development and product
marketing are handled by a team at EMC's worldwide
headquarters in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA.
The Belgian development team is truly international
with more than a quarter of the developers coming
from all over the world. Kurt Van Looveren, formerly
Vice President Software Engineering at Belgium's IT
security specialist Ubizen, serves as General Manager.

One of the co-founders of Wave Research, Jan Van
Riel, is one of the driving forces of the development
and has become EMC BDG's Director of Technology.

EMC BDG recently moved to a new facility in
Mechelen that has a fully equipped lab for research
into future technologies and will allow the team to
scale up to about 90 people. This meant that the
team had to say goodbye to their 19th century castle,
their big garden and assorted farmyard animals because
the building had simply become too small for the
current activities and ambitions of EMC BDG.<g>

After 12 months of highly confidential and intensive
development, EMC BDG can finally show its products.
Centera's core technology is perceived as ground
breaking and is a crucial element to EMC's strategy.
Centera's Belgian Roots