FileNet Corporation (NASDAQ: FILE), the leading provider of Enterprise Content and Business Process Management solutions, and Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP), today announced the achievement of key performance and interoperability goals established as part of their continuing alliance. Benchmark performance results validate both companies’ ability to provide enterprise customers with a scalable storage environment that allows them to more effectively grow and manage proliferating content and data objects. Additionally, with the release of version 3.5 of the FileNet P8 platform, new FileNet support of NetApp SnapLock^TM compliance software for records and email management provides customers with a reliable, Write-Once Read-Many (WORM) storage solution.

ECM Performance Benchmark

To validate that FileNet and NetApp solutions meet or exceed enterprise requirements for document and data storage performance and scalability, the companies have put their combined offerings through extensive “Content Object Benchmark” testing.

The Content Object Benchmark testing of the NetApp FAS940 (Fabric-Attached Storage) storage systems evaluated the ability of the FileNet P8 Content Engine to ingest, catalog, and store very high volumes of content objects—representative of the average size of one email attachment, or a typical 5-page Microsoft Word text document. FileNet’s Content Engine is the enterprise content catalog services and repository offering that underlies all FileNet P8 product suites, including Business Process Manager, Email Manager, Forms Manager, Records Manager and Team Collaboration Manager.

Using FileNet’s 3.5 version of the P8 Content Engine with its expanded storage support and more than 90 other enhancements, the testing results demonstrated that the FileNet ECM software used with NetApp storage can achieve high levels of object storage and archiving performance in addition to fast end-user response time. The Content Object Benchmark results, combined with previous testing results from FileNet on NetApp storage, found that FileNet P8 and NetApp storage can easily scale to approximately one billion data objects, while supporting thousands of enterprise users.

Content Object Benchmark Testing Highlights:

• Sustained ingestion rates of 260 -100KB documents per second over an optimal 3 Content Engine-instance configuration. This rate translates to more than 22.4 million documents over a 24-hour period.
• Sustained ingestion rates of more than 970 “content-less” objects per second, each averaging 3KB. This demonstrates FileNet P8’s ability to rapidly ingest metadata, or data about data, validating the high performance of FileNet’s Content Federation Services, which is an overarching catalog for content located in both FileNet and non-FileNet repositories – offered in the 3.5 FileNet P8 release.
• Highly scalable block I/O performance via the Fibre Channel protocol, using NetApp storage systems and Data ONTAP? 7G software in a realistic, “real world” configuration. Results were achieved with NetApp RAID-DP? to combine high performance with protection against multiple disk failure and data loss. The storage system averaged less than 50 percent CPU utilization during the test, inviting even higher levels of I/O in future testing.
• Proved a 20 million-plus per day content object repository can be deployed using open-standard Enterprise Content Management software and low-to-moderate-cost FAS technologies.

“This testing demonstrates FileNet P8 can achieve industry-leading performance with cost-effective, easy-to-manage NetApp storage,” said Martyn Christian, chief marketing officer for FileNet. “FileNet and NetApp customers can take advantage of reliable content management solutions that scale to ensure timely access to business-critical information at a low total cost of ownership.”

Expanded FileNet Support for NetApp SnapLock

Additionally, FileNet is offering support for NetApp SnapLock regulated data and data permanence storage solutions across the entire FileNet P8 product line.

FileNet P8 used with NetApp SnapLock functionality provides a flexible, extensible and proven option for companies embarking on compliance initiatives. SnapLock is a non-rewritable, non-erasable solution for disk storage that allows users to set flexible records retention periods and prevent premature deletion of documents at the storage level on NetApp NearStore® and FAS storage systems. This solution is designed to provide a WORM storage system, enabling companies to address a multitude of corporate governance mandates and regulations requiring protection against inappropriate deletion or alteration of records.

FileNet’s support for SnapLock in the 3.5 release of FileNet P8 extends the company’s existing support for SnapLock in its Image Manager enterprise imaging product to the entire FileNet P8 platform and the entire line of FileNet product suites.

“NetApp is pleased to be part of FileNet’s high-performance, highly-scalable ECM solution,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Products and Partners at Network Appliance. “NetApp offers high performance storage that has simplified the management of large FileNet repositories for more than three years. Today’s news of demonstrated high performance and expanded SnapLock support in FileNet’s P8 platform offers customers an industry-leading solution for high-volume, enterprise-wide document and records management, as well as improved business processes and better regulatory compliance.”

FileNet believes that magnetic disk protected storage technologies are a critical and growing component of ECM deployments. This expanded integration builds on the success the two companies are having in satisfying the needs of large-scale enterprise content management deployments that leverage FileNet’s market-leading ECM software with NetApp unified storage, supporting both network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) solutions on one system. Additionally, the partnership addresses customers’ needs for integrated content/storage management solutions to reduce risks associated with regulatory compliance while reducing complexity and improving performance, for a lower total cost of ownership.

“For some time now, FileNet and NetApp have shown their combined commitment to tightly integrate FileNet ECM solutions with NetApp unified storage technologies to help manage, store, and preserve enterprise content,” added Christian at FileNet. “This enables our customers to manage information of all types throughout the complex business lifecycle of creation, secure access, revision, retention, re-use, Web publishing, and if necessary, destruction.”