News

posted on 17 April 2008 16:23

Israeli tech news medium Globes reports that IBM has bought De-duplication vendor Diligent Technologies. 

Globes reported talks on an aquisition about a month ago. 

De-duplication at the sub-file level involves detecting repeated byte-level patterns in files and replacing them by pointers to save space. Such de-duping of backup data can reduce files to a tenth, a twentieth or an even smaller fraction of their original size. Diligent's ProtecTIER product carries out the CPU-intensive de-dupe when data is ingested, in contrast to most other de-dupe products which carry it out after backup data has been written to a disk array or disk-based virtual tape library, saying this means the backup speed is unaffected.

Diligent says its technology is simply faster than every other vendors and its safe to do it in-line, as backup data arrives in its disk arrays.

IBM is supposed to put a statement in a day or few. The price is $200 million and it is the second company Moshe Yanai is involved with which IBM has bought, the first being clustered and grid filer vendor XIV. 

It's IBM's third Israeli acquisition as it bought continuous data protection startup FilesX a week ago. 

So ... what is going on? Why has IBM embarked upon an EMC-style acquisition spree? A common factor seems to be files and the space needed to stote them and the capability needed to protect them. Unstructured information is becoming a vast, expanding and important business resource. It needs storing (XIV), but in a space-efficient way (Diligent ProtecTIER), and it needs continuously protecting (FilesX).

IBM might also think that unstructured file storage needs virtualising but there has been no acquisition in this area.

Hitachi Data Systems OEMs the Diligent product so it now finds itself using IBM-owned technology. So too will Overland Storage and Sun. The longevity of the HDS and Sun deals might now be in doubt.

Moshe Yanai and Diligent CEO Doron Kempel co-founded Diligent in 2002 as a buyout of an EMC Israel research facility. EMC still owns 20 percent so it is line to receive a $40 million payout. That's a nice present for Tucci's men.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}