In a major accomplishment for the managed services space, WD, a Western Digital company, has acquired Arkeia Software, Inc. and has added network backup software and appliances to its expanding small and medium-sized business (SMB) product portfolio. The company has also unveiled general availability of Arkeia's Network Backup version 10.0 software.
The privately held Arkeia's software, appliances and virtual appliances are designed
to backup data to disk, tape and cloud storage. Arkeia also offers patented Progressive Deduplication technology that speeds hybrid cloud backup through the reduction of bandwidth necessary to replicate backup sets over wide area networks.
"Arkeia's products expand WD's growing product portfolio of solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD's Branded and CE products, in a statement. "SMB organizations are managing ever-growing volumes of critical business data, which need to be stored, shared and secured. Our easy-to-manage small storage server, WD Sentinel DX4000, provides backup and storage centralization capabilities for small businesses and workgroups, while Arkeia's network backup software provides a more feature-rich data-protection solution for larger SMB customers."
Arkeia's products are sold globally through resellers and managed service providers (MSPs). The WD acquisition was accomplished via a merger transaction, which encompassed all employees, technology and products of Arkeia. The company will be integrated into WD's Branded Products SMB unit with products retaining the Arkeia name initially.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but WD will support all customers on current maintenance and plans and retain the company's software and appliance product lines.
The general availability of Arkeia Network Backup v10.0 enables hybrid cloud backups by letting administrators combine physical media and Internet transport to replicate backup sets to or from remote cloud storage. SMBs may protect large volumes of data in the cloud without paying high monthly bandwidth charges.
Bill Evans, senior director of worldwide software marketing at WD and former CEO of Arkeia Software, said, "The Arkeia team is delighted to be a part of WD. WD has chosen an ideal moment to invest in this critical product category as backup-to-disk solutions accelerate their displacement of backup-to-tape. WD's financial strength, engineering excellence and organizational discipline will take Arkeia's products and customers to the next
Edited by
Amanda Ciccatelli
