ADIC Acquires Virtual Tape Technology
V-Stor Software Will Allow Disk and Tape to Combine for Backup
May 7, 2002 BW - Advanced Digital Information Corporation the leader in Intelligent Storage(TM) solutions, announced today that it has acquired the assets and hired the engineering and product management personnel of V-Stor, a privately held company developing disk-based data protection products for the open systems market, for an undisclosed amount.
In its quarter ended April 30, 2002, ADIC(R) will recognize acquisition expenses of approximately $1,500,000 related to acquired in-process research and development and compensation to V-Stor personnel.
The V-Stor development effort includes software that allows disk-based storage to look and act like tape systems to traditional backup applications in order to allow disk to be utilized easily in existing data protection systems. The new products will allow users to enjoy the enhanced performance and other benefits of combined disk-tape solutions while continuing to use the backup software products and procedures that they use today.
"Data protection is becoming more critical than ever to enterprise IT departments, and we believe that backup systems that combine disk and tape will be able to offer very interesting advantages," commented Jonathan Otis, ADIC senior vice president of Technology. "Disk provides fast operational response characteristics -- both for file writing and file recovery -- and with the right kind of intelligent management policies, it can present hosts with a flexible virtual environment where resources can be dynamically reconfigured on demand. Tape offers reliability and durability, it is designed to provide safe and efficient off-site data protection, and it provides scalable capacity at a cost that is projected to remain several times lower than disk. Together, they can create a very effective data protection solution."
"Disk as data protection is used today for replicating data and establishing mirrored hot sites, but products have not been available for open systems networks that allow disk to operate as an effective partner to tape for backup," added Otis. "With this acquisition, we believe ADIC is in the strongest position in the industry to develop true multiple media solutions. Now we have experience in making disk look like tape, which we have added to our existing expertise in distributed file systems and policy-based data management -- technology that allows tape and disk to work together as general-purpose storage. Integration efforts are well under way, and we expect to deliver products that combine disk and tape for backup during this calendar year."
The move represents a continuation of ADIC's on-going initiative to combine multiple storage technologies into integrated storage management systems. In April, ADIC introduced its new StorNext Management Suite, a software product that merges disk and tape into an integrated, high capacity storage system that provides comprehensive access, management, and protection of data in Storage Area Networks (SANs).
V-Stor was founded in 2000 as an open systems spin-off from Sutmyn Storage Corporation, a pioneering developer of technology for mainframe data protection applications. Intellectual property acquired by ADIC from V-Stor includes several patents and patent applications covering technology related to high availability data management and software code developed independently and in conjunction with Sutmyn for emulating tape storage systems on disk-based media.
"We think this acquisition will enhance the kind of data protection available to IT departments by providing mainframe-class levels of reliability for open systems applications," explained Otis. |
