Network Appliance acquires Topio

Stroage vendor buys software vendor to help customers to migrate their systems over without disruption. Deal to close before the end of the year

Storage vendor Network Appliance (NetApp) has announced that it is acquiring software vendor Topio for approximately $160 million in an all-cash transaction.

Topio software allows customers to replicate, recover, and protect data over any distance regardless of the underlying server or storage infrastructure.

NetApp said that customers with production storage from another hardware vendor can now non-disruptively replicate data to a NetApp system and use NetApp FlexClone technology, which provides near-instantaneous creation of multiple clones of data without additional storage requirements. Second, the firm said, customers with mixed legacy storage environments can unify their disaster recovery environment NetApp tiered storage platforms and put the disaster recovery copy to active business use.

Jay Kidd, senior vice president and general manager, emerging products group at NetApp, said: “The average enterprise creates and stores anywhere between 10 and 20 copies of its data, including testing and application development data, which can increase the amount of storage consumed by 10 to 20 times. This is both expensive and time consuming. With the addition of Topio, enterprises using legacy storage systems can create working data copies in seconds while dramatically decreasing overall storage requirements.”

The acquisition is expected to close in December 2006, subject to customary closing conditions. Topio will be a new business unit within NetApp, and its research and development team will continue to operate in Israel.