A new milestone in the history of ArchivistaBox

Pfaffhausen, 17 February: during a discussion with a customer last August, I let myself get carried away by stating that the ArchivistaBox 64Bit would be ready in two weeks, two months or two years. If you add two weeks, two months and two years together and divide the number of days by three (average), the result is 9.08 months [(((2*365+(2*30)+(2*14))/3.0)/30=9.08]. It is not without pride that I can state today that we have managed to carry out the transition from 32 to 64 bit, i.e. completed the second milestone, in less than 6 months.

Looking back on the history of ArchivistaBox

Today, we are celebrating the second milestone. But we should not forget the first, i.e. the first generation of ArchivistaBox. This was launched in 2005. Development then took significantly longer, even though our strategy document (in German) of 14 July 2004 assumed a development time of two months. In the end, we needed well over a year to create the first generation of ArchivistaBox. Strictly speaking, the first version (the one listed in the strategy document) never appeared, it was ‘canned’ before completion to make way for the ArchivistaBox 32Bit, which was created from scratch.

I would like to note here another item from the old strategy document. In 2005, our ArchivistaBox systems cost between SFR 3,000.00 and SFR 30,000.00. Today, prices range from SFR 600.00 (Dolder) to SFR 7,500.00 (Matterhorn). How was/is such a price reduction possible? Of course, we and our customers are benefitting from significantly lower purchase prices for hardware. That's one factor. The other is that when developing the second generation we did not have to start completely from scratch. In 2005, we had to rewrite all of our program code.

During the transition from 32 to 64 bit, we were able to import 100 per cent of the application-specific code. We can use the same code today for both 32 and 64 bit. If this is the case, you may ask why we then needed an entire six months for the development? The answer is simple: when switching from 32 to 64 bit, we added a great many new features that we simply wanted to have. I would like to briefly present the most important of these here.

That's why the ArchivistaBox 64Bit is such a milestone.

The first generation of ArchivistaBox could be set up in approx. half an hour. 30 minutes is extremely competitive, if you consider the amount of time generally required to set up a specialized application. Still, we wanted more, significantly more. As I have already mentioned several times in this blog, we are now at one to two minutes (the record in our tests with SSD disks is currently 24 seconds).

But why do we consider this to be such a key issue? Let me put it this way. If someone is evaluating a new solution today, they often think about outsourcing. Today, this is commonly referred to as cloud computing, but we are ultimately talking about outsourced solutions. Why should a small or mid-sized business, or even a multinational corporation (we have seen both!), still operate IT systems when they can be procured at any time from the web for a fixed price? The potential is enormous: available at all times, no laborious setup process, log in and go.

That's exactly why there is the ArchivistaBox: implementation takes one to two minutes, no laborious setup process, simply log in and go! Furthermore, you have a solution that's located at your office and yet can still be attached to the web at any time. While outsourcing can sometimes pose significant risks (questions of data sovereignty, availability and confidentiality), ArchivistaBox offers the advantages of an outsourced solution on your premises. Put simply: outsourcing in-house!

For years, you have been able to operate the ArchivistaBox virtually. However, it can now also offer virtualization itself and can, as always, run normally on a physical box. A combination thereof is also feasible at any time. For instance, an ArchivistaBox can include additional ArchivistaBoxes (box-in-box), and different operating systems can even be run on an ArchivistaBox at any time. You alone determine how and for what purpose you would like to operate the ArchivistaBox.

In the past, many customers have asked for redundant systems. ArchivistaBox has had these for years! Firstly, because ArchivistaBox solutions can always run on completely independent box systems redundantly, but also because we support hardware RAID solutions and the ArchivistaBox 64Bit now supports software RAID. This allows for solutions that work with extremely fast solid state disk networks (SSD). If someone requires a throughput of one GB per second or more, this can easily be achieved with the ArchivistaBox 64Bit. You can find the open source CDs here. Furthermore, you can order your ArchivistaBox 64Bit straight away from our online store.