Axxana

Axxana, founded in September 2005 by Eli Efrat, Alex Winokur, and Dan Hochberg, operates in the disaster recovery and data protection market. The founding team brought extensive experience from the data storage industry to address the challenge of achieving zero data loss over any distance. The company provides a hardware-based solution for enterprises, aiming to eliminate the risk of data loss during disasters by bridging the gap between high-cost synchronous replication and the potential data loss of asynchronous methods.

Axxana's core offering is the Phoenix System, an Enterprise Data Recorder (EDR) that functions like a flight recorder or "black box" for data centers. This system is designed to work in conjunction with existing asynchronous replication solutions. While asynchronous replication sends data to a remote backup site, the on-premise Phoenix System captures a synchronous copy of the most recent data that hasn't yet been replicated. This physical black box is a hardened appliance built to withstand extreme events such as fires, earthquakes, and floods, surviving temperatures up to 2,000°F and shocks up to 40 Gs. In the event of a primary data center failure, the data from the remote asynchronous copy is combined with the data preserved in the Phoenix black box to ensure a complete, zero-loss recovery.

The company's business model centers on selling this specialized hardware, which allows clients to avoid the high bandwidth costs and distance limitations of traditional synchronous replication while still achieving a zero Recovery Point Objective (RPO). Axxana formed a key collaboration with EMC, integrating its Phoenix System with EMC's RecoverPoint replication solution, which made the product available through the EMC Select program. This strategy targeted enterprises that require robust business continuity but are constrained by the budget and infrastructure demands of fully synchronous disaster recovery topologies. After raising approximately $19-25 million over several funding rounds from investors including Carmel Ventures, Gemini Israel Funds, and Sumitomo, Axxana was acquired by Infinidat in January 2018.

Keywords: Enterprise Data Recorder, EDR, zero data loss, disaster recovery, business continuity, data protection, asynchronous replication, Phoenix System, data storage, black box for data, EMC RecoverPoint, storage replication, data survivability, synchronous recovery, remote data protection, hardened storage, data center resilience, RPO zero, data lag protection, information disaster recovery