NetApp buys data migration vendor Topio for $160M

13.11.2006
Network Appliance Inc. announced earlier this week that it had acquired replication vendor Topio Inc. in a US$160 million all-cash deal.

Topio's Data Protection Suite is used for tasks such as data migration, backup consolidation and data recovery in disaster recovery situations.

When incorporated into the NetApp product line, the Topio product will let users migrate data from primary storage devices that are not NetApp to NetApp targets, said Patrick Rogers, vice president for products and alliances marketing for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company. NetApp is hoping the purchase will give the company the opportunity to enter into agreements with companies looking to replace some of their more expensive primary storage, such as EMC Corp.'s Symmetrix DMX systems, with less expensive secondary storage from NetApp, he said.

Rogers said that while the acquisition was similar to EMC's acquisition last May of Kashya Inc. (see "EMC buys data protection software company"), NetApp preferred Topio because it supports iSCSI and direct-attached storage as well as the Fibre Channel support offered by Kashya.

The product, which will be on the NetApp price list when the sale closes in December, will continue to be sold as a stand-alone, and Topio's existing 100 or so customers -- 30 of them in the Fortune 500, Rogers said -- will continue to be supported. All 60 employees will be kept on, as will an R&D facility in Haifa, Israel. Topio's Santa Clara, Calif., employees will move to NetApp's Sunnyvale facility.

Tony Asaro, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass., said the acquisition would give Topio a reach into the enterprise it wouldn't have had on its own due to the company's size. However, Rhoda Phillips, an analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass., said NetApp would need to figure out its product strategy and develop a roadmap for how to it will integrate and sell its different products.