Availl - Made for Sharing

Distributed engineering teams ought to appreciate Availl's software. In case you didn't have enough acronyms to contend with, Availl fits in a category called WAFS - wide area file systems. It lets you share CAD files among remote offices. Say your manufacturing facility needs to access a CAD model from headquarters, Availl will copy the file to a local server (as they change). As CAD models can be rather large, this should make access much faster than sharing the file over a wide area network or the Internet because access takes place at hard drive speed. Availl takes care to use real time file locks to prevent conflicts as it simultaneously monitors and mirrors multiple file/directory locations, keeping them all in synch. How is this different than the competition, such as Steelhead from Riverbed Technology? First, it is a software-only product, whereas Riverbed requires hardware. So it should be cheaper but don't try finding prices on Availl's website (why do companies hide that most important information!) Says Craig Randall of Availl, "We make the whole file local," implying that Riverbed does not.

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[rtara]

Approximate cost is $2000 per site, says Craig of Availl