NetApp to Acquire Bycast

NetApp, Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Bycast, Inc., a privately-held company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in an all-cash transaction.

Bycast is a developer of object-based storage software designed to manage petabyte-scale, globally distributed repositories of images, video, and records for enterprises and service providers. Customers whose business depends on access to critical data across geographically distributed locations rely on Bycast to better share and retain content anywhere, any time to quickly respond to their changing business requirements. Founded more than 10 years ago, Bycast has helped more than 250 customers worldwide dramatically improve their operational efficiency and reduce the administrative burden of managing massive quantities of data across multiple geographies.

Bycast extends NetApp’s leadership position in unified storage by adding an object-based storage software offering. Object-based storage is a new and emerging approach to storing and accessing data based on object names and rich metadata that describes the content in greater detail, which simplifies the task of large-scale object storage while improving the ability to quickly search and locate data objects.

For example, a media company can use an object-based storage solution to provide its graphic artists around the world with the ability to simultaneously access data and collaborate on common projects. Object-based storage interfaces greatly simplify the administration of the storage used for this purpose. With the acquisition of Bycast, NetApp broadens its capabilities in serving key verticals such as digital media, Web 2.0, healthcare, and cloud services providers and helps customers create even greater efficiencies across data centers around the globe.

"Bycast extends our unified storage strategy and enhances our solution for shared storage infrastructure by adding new capabilities for global data access and mobility," said Manish Goel, executive vice president, Product Operations, NetApp. "The addition of Bycast’s products enables NetApp to offer our enterprise customers and service provider partners a complementary solution that enables them to efficiently build and manage a very large-scale global repository of data central to many IT-as-a-service offerings."

Portfolio and People Synergy
Bycast enables NetApp to expand into new opportunities and markets for petabyte-scale, billion-object content repositories. In addition to its products, Bycast brings to NetApp valuable technology and talented employees. Bycast employees’ technical expertise, experience, and support of their customers create powerful synergies with the NetApp culture, values, and commitment to customer success. Bycast’s Vancouver headquarters will become a technology center for NetApp and will be responsible for existing Bycast products and future product development.

As a proven market leader in the storage industry, NetApp provides Bycast immediate enterprise credibility. In addition, NetApp’s global sales organization and partnerships will expand the delivery of the Bycast portfolio and enable broader market reach to enterprise customers, service providers, international markets, and additional vertical markets to drive adoption and success of its products.

"We are excited and look forward to joining the NetApp team," said Moe Kermani, CEO of Bycast. "We share a complementary vision and a common dedication to excellence. Together we will offer customers the best-in-class content repository solutions that further their drive toward a unified storage infrastructure."

The acquisition is expected to close in May 2010, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.