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Another Small Acquisition by Imation: Nine Technology

This time in de-dupe, not security

This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on December 21, 2011 at 2:55 pm
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Nine Technology, LLC announced that the technology that operates the Powered By Nine platform was awarded a U.S. patent for its innovative merger of two-stage, block-level deduplication and encryption.

The patent and technology were subsequently acquired, along with certain other Nine Technology assets, by Imation Corp., a leading global technology company.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
 
The backup and recovery services that Nine Technology has offered its channel partners since April 2010 will not be interrupted; MSPs and VARs currently offering Powered By Nine solutions will benefit from Imation’s resources as development on the software continues. Channel partners will remain clients of Nine Technology, and the Powered By Nine infrastructure on which their customers’ data is stored will remain the property of Nine Technology.
 
"In the two years that Powered By Nine has been active in the marketplace, the technology has repeatedly been proven faster, more efficient and more comprehensive than other options," said Tom Gelson, founder and former CEO of Nine Technology. "Imation’s acquisition of the intellectual property and other assets will strengthen our efforts to develop Powered By Nine into the strongest data backup and recovery solution available. I want to thank the many channel partners who have supported Nine Technology and assure them that their businesses and their customers will continue to enjoy the benefits of working with our team."
 
Imation and Nine Technology first partnered in October 2010, when Imation announced the use of RDX technology as a cloud seeding device for Powered By Nine data backup. Nine Technology will continue to support RDX-based cloud seeding for Powered By Nine PRO users.
 
"Scalable storage for SMBs is a major growth opportunity for Imation, and Nine Technology’s patented solution complemented our roadmap in several ways," said Ian Williams, Imation vice president, global marketing and product management. "We’re eager to coordinate the continued development of the software with our team and with Nine Technology as a strategic partner."
 
Following the acquisition, Gelson and CTO Alex Stoev will join Imation to help coordinate the continued development of Powered By Nine and as key additions to the company’s scalable storage team. This month, Nine Technology announced that Gene Fay was promoted to President and will oversee day-to-day operations, including business development, channel partnerships and customer service.

Comments

Imation continues to acquire small companies to try to find a way to expand after seeing revenues decreasing and cumulating losses since 5 years.

Since the beginning of the year, it acquires:

  • encryptX in security software for external storage devices for $2.3 million
  • Assets of MXI Security in secure portable solutions for $33.7 million
  • Assets of IronKey in secure storage hardware for $19 million
  • Assets of ProStor Systems in Infinivault archiving systems with preliminary purchase price of $0.5 million
To these small acquisitions, Imation this time added another one, Nine Technology, a start-up founded in 2010 and based in Middleboro, MA, with offices in Toronto, CA and Guangzhou, China. Terms of the deal were not yet announced but we think the price to get IP and assets of this firm could be in the ten million dollar range.

The two companies were already working together. Last year Imation announced a partnership with Nine Technology to add online backup to RDX.

imation_nine_technology

The acquired company has two innovative technologies: mainly a patented two-stage, block-level de-dupe and also Redundant Array of Independent Nodes (RAIN), a grid-based server architecture supporting support multiple node failures that are used on its Powered by Nine, an online backup solution for MSPs and VARs.

Nine Technology founder and CEO Tom Gelson (who founded Vault USA, acquired by NextVault last year after working for EMC, and also founder of More Solutions merging with Neartek in 2001), as well as CTO Alex Stoev will join Imation storage team.

Our conclusion: Nine Technology can help Imation, getting de-dupe that was missing and can be apply to all its storage products. But online backup market is already saturated. This deal will not be sufficient to redress a company, 3M spin off since 1996, that needs desperately a new business model and/or a big acquisition, and maybe a new visionary CEO, not to finish like old giant competitor Kodak.

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