News

Princeton Softech: Spin off on a mission

• By Jack Vaughan
• April 17, 2002

Princeton Softech recently said it had closed a $21 million deal with Apax Partners Inc. and co-investor LLR Partners Inc., enabling the software company to spin-off from its parent, Computer Horizons Corp. Now, as an independent, Princeton Softech will seek to enlarge its efforts to promote its technology for active archiving.

The active archiving approach seeks to reduce database and data warehouse maintenance costs by aggressively and automatically pulling unneeded data offline.

Company CEO Lisa Cash suggests Princeton Softech's recent efforts have already positioned it as the 'thought leader' in the field of active archiving, which she said is marked by great potential.

"Web apps collect lots of data. Its usefulness may be short lived, but you may well have to retain that data anyway. Today, even data warehouses need archiving. The cost of maintaining them is becoming cumbersome for organizations," she said.

"We archive data from relational databases," Cash continued, "if you can remove and restore relational data [natural] form, that enhances performance of the application -- response times decrease. Maintenance procedures are also improved."

Princeton Softech's core toolset gained considerable use during the industry-wide rush to prepare for the year 2000, catching the attention of Computer Horizons. Significant enhancements to that basic technology have allowed the company to forge into the nascent active archiving segment. Princeton Softech became a part of Computer Horizons in 1998. Computer Horizons, already an established systems integrator at that time, was seeking to expand via tools and non-Y2K-related development efforts.