HP To Acquire OuterBay

HP last week said it has signed a deal to acquire Cupertino, Calif.-based OuterBay, a developer of archiving software for enterprise applications and databases, with an emphasis on Oracle databases, for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition comes on the heels of HP&'s purchase last fall of AppIQ, a developer of software to manage SANs and storage resources. As a part of HP&'s ILM offerings, the AppIQ software helps automate the management of a variety of storage tasks within the data center.

Paul O&'Brien, director of ILM for HP, said the OuterBay acquisition will give the vendor access to intellectual property that can expand its ILM offerings.

While HP has had products for archiving and managing unstructured data such as e-mails and documents, OuterBay gives it the technology for managing structured data, such as that found in databases, O&'Brien said.

Rich Baldwin, president and CEO of Nth Generation Computing, a San Diego-based HP solution provider, said customers are always looking for better ways to manage and increase the performance of Oracle databases, and that OuterBay will go far to help with the task.

“The whole ILM story is one that is rapidly evolving,” Baldwin said. “I&'m really pleased to see HP step up to bat. It&'s good to see them acquiring good technology again.”

Kathie Shenton, senior account manager at Select, a Westwood, Mass.-based solution provider, said VARs and customers should not underestimate the importance of ILM, which can help cut storage costs and ensure the recovery of data as needed.

O&'Brien said integrating ILM is an ongoing strategy at HP, and close integration with OuterBay will build on that strategy. HP has had an OEM deal with OuterBay for the past 12 months, but buying the company will make it easier to integrate its technology with HP-UX, AppIQ and HP&'s RISS (Reference Information Storage System) data archiving appliance, he said.