History 2004: At Least, StorageTek’s First ILM Acquisition

We were desperate to see StorageTek get its hands on some new technologies to reinforce its ILM offering, particularly in terms of software. (It certainly wasn’t going to set the world on fire with its last acquisition, dating to 2002, of NetiX, a consulting and services company.)

It has happened at last, although we can only consider the operation a wise first step. The tape company has gotten hold of Storability Software, in an asset purchase transaction for an undisclosed amount. Assets include IP, software license agreements and customer contracts.

70 employees based in Southborough, MA will join the StorageTek team.

Storability’s star product is Global Storage Manager (GSM), a software that enables an overall view of storage assets, with types of data, how it is being stored and how users access the data, no doubt a critical component in the development of an ILM solution.

GSM, furthermore, was greatly enhanced with the earlier acquisition of ProvisionSoft in 2003.

The product will now be sold by StorageTek for roughly €180,000 in a configuration for remote management of 2 sites and 5 libraries.

Relations between the 2 companies date back some time. In 2002, StorageTek acquired the Storability’s storage service provider business, although it has never revealed for how much. Since then, StorageTek has been Storability’s leading reseller, with its BRM product, a light version of GSM for backup devices only.

Since its founding in February 2000, the start-up had raised a total of $66 million, including $7 million last year.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 201 on October 2004 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.