Tandberg Acquires ProStor RDX Business

ProStor Systems, Inc. announced the sale of its RDX removable disk business. Tandberg Data will acquire the RDX business, including intellectual property and key members of ProStor’s RDX engineering team.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

ProStor Systems is the inventor and original developer of RDX removable disk technology and the only vendor to offer a multi-tiered storage system based on RDX.

RDX removable disk technology is for in enterprise removable disk storage for backup, disaster protection and archive. ProStor Systems licensed the RDX technology to Tandberg Data to manufacture, market and sell worldwide. Since then, Tandberg Data has been instrumental in RDX technology achieving acceptance and has established itself as a market leader in the removable disk market.

ProStor offers a multi-tiered storage system based on RDX technology. “In recent months, we’ve enhanced and expanded the ProStor InfiniVault product line significantly. The sale of the RDX business will enable us to align our resources and focus our attention solely on scaling the InfiniVault product portfolio,” explains Frank Harbist, ProStor Systems’ CEO.

ProStor InfiniVault, a multi-tiered storage system for fixed digital assets, is suited to provide a solution where data is stored at the most efficient level given business retention and retrieval requirements. The InfiniVault offers backward- and forward-compatibility so that any capacity RDX disk can be intermixed in the system, realizing cost savings as data grows by eliminating the need to purchase a new system. ProStor will continue to offer its full range of RDX capacity points as part of selling the InfiniVault portfolio. ProStor offers system-matching warranties for RDX drives that are bought from ProStor as part of an InfiniVault sale.

The InfiniVault product line has been expanding to include features that enable data virtualization across online, nearline, offline, and offsite tiers based on policies. This transaction enables the continued development of long-term data management and retention capabilities to come in the future. ProStor continues to experience solid acceleration in number of customers and sales – serving over 200 customers and realizing over 100% growth in sales year over year.

Comments

After deciding to stop all its tape manufacturing activities, Imation
was supposed to modify its business model with small acquisitions. ProStor could
be a good one for several reasons. Imation has already licensed RDX
technology to manufacture its own RDX drives and boxes, has a big OEM,
IBM, according to an inside source of Big Blue, and partners with Dell
for these products. More than that, it signed with ProStor in March 2010
a new extended agreement to get a license to manufacture, market and
sell RDX removable hard disk systems through 2020 and invested $5
million to help advance this technology.

Nevertheless the final buyer of RDX technology (not ProStor) is Tandberg Data, not Imation, becoming a licensee of Tandberg
rather than ProStor. "We will support partners like Imation in
developing their RDX business. We have a long standing history of
cooperation with Imation and we look forward to further strengthening
this relationship," says Tandberg's CEO Pat Clarke.

Tandberg is the biggest seller of these removable HDD solutions in the world with OEMs
including server manufacturers like Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Lenovo,
NEC and Toshiba.

Quantum is another RDX storage vendor after the total failure of GoVault.

BDT also licenses the technology to manufacture automation products
based on RDX cartridges to develop multi-terabyte automation solutions,
but no products have been revealed up to now. Also in Germany, actidata sells RDX technology, probably through Imation rather than Tandberg, its
big rival in the country.

Now ProStor, a start-up founded in 2005, will only concentrate on
InfiniVault archiving subsystems that will continue to use RDX, now
licensed back from Tandberg. Last March the company claims 200
InfiniVault customers as well as 200PB of RDX shipped to 250,000 customers
that use them principally to replace tapes.