UPDATE: EMC Buys Data Protection Vendor Kashya
Plans call for San Jose, Calif.-based Kashya to be integrated into EMC’s software division. The Hopkinton, Mass., storage giant said it doesn’t expect the acquisition to have a material impact on its 2006 revenue and earnings.
Kashya is a developer of continuous data protection software. With continuous data protection, or CDP, changes to data are backed up immediately or at predefined intervals to enable users to instantly recover a deleted, corrupted or modified file. Kashya is one of a handful of developers of true CDP technology that captures data changes in real time, instead of backing up the changes at set intervals.
CDP is a hot technology nowadays, said Keith Norbie, business solutions manager at Nexus Information Systems, a Plymouth, Minn.-based EMC solution provider who has worked with CDP solutions from EMC, CommVault and Symantec/Veritas. "It's the next big thing in data protection and data uptime," he said.
When helping a customer choose a CDP solution, one of the top concerns is that the product is the best solution and matches customers' current technology, said Norbie. "We're not trying to shoehorn in a competitive solution without a technical reason," he said.
With Kashya, EMC gets a solid CDP offering, Norbie added. "EMC knows it's in their best interest to have the right technology to tie data protection together," he said.
For Mike Fanelli, a partner at TreTempo, a Dallas-based storage solution provider, the disappearance of smaller technology companies through acquisitions can be exasperating to solution providers trying to differentiate themselves.
"This is killing me," Fanelli said. "I'm going to have to get a new job. Every time I start with a new company, EMC goes out and buys them. So instead of being one of only two Kashya resellers in the Dallas area, I'll have to become one of 20 EMC VARs."
Acquiring Kashya gives EMC its own CDP offering, said Rob Emsley, senior director of software product marketing at EMC. EMC late last year started offering its RecoverPoint CDP software based on technology OEM'd from Mendocino Software, which also has an OEM relationship with EMC rival Hewlett-Packard.
"Clearly, with this acquisition, we will revisit our partnership with Mendocino," Emsley said. "We're not making any announcements yet. But we will use Kashya in future releases of RecoverPoint."
Kashya also provides a network-based solution for remote data replication and protection that plays well with the EMC Invista network-based, block storage virtualization solution just coming to market, according to Emsley. "Remote replication is a requirement many prospects talk about when we present Invista to them," he said.
The Kashya technology, in addition, expands EMC’s software portfolio for remote replication across heterogeneous environments and furthers its information life-cycle management (ILM) strategy, Emsley said.
Kashya already has an indirect sales channel that EMC hopes to leverage to sell its data protection technology, including the RecoverPoint software and Invista appliance, Emsley said.
The Kashya deal also brings EMC closer to Cisco Systems. EMC and Cisco are working on Invista network-based storage virtualization via Cisco's MDS 9000 intelligent storage switch, Emsley said. A similar relationship is expected to form with Brocade, which according to the EMC Invista road map is expected to support Invista in its SAN switches in the near future, he said.
Still, the acquisition could cause angst at two storage vendors that have relationships with Kashya, including Xiotech, Eden Prairie, Minn., and Pillar Data Systems, San Jose. "As we move forward, we will revisit all the business relationships," Emsley said. "But it's business as usual at the outset."
Kashya’s Israel-based research-and-development arm also will form the core of the new EMC Israel Software Development Center, said Emsley.
RUSSELL REDMAN contributed to this story.