CA acquires XOsoft, adds replication to ARCserve |
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By Jo Maitland, News Director
12 Jul 2006 | SearchStorage.com |
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CA Inc. acquired privately held XOsoft Inc., makers of long-distance continuous replication software for disaster recovery, on Tuesday. CA said it plans to integrate XOsoft's products into its BrightStor ARCserve backup software to provide users with a single offering for backup and replication. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
XOsoft's products include continuous data protection (CDP) software and replication for most file and application servers, including Windows Servers, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft IIS and Oracle. The company pioneered the ability to simulate and test disaster recovery in a nondisruptive fashion, a capability that most of the major storage players are now following.
"CA is making very aggressive, well thought out acquisitions to fill product portfolio gaps," said Brian Babineau, senior analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. "They clearly are not buying 'catch up' technology, they are buying emerging technology like CDP and records management that customers are just starting to kick the tires on."
The XOsoft deal follows a string of acquisitions by CA in recent months in the storage and application management space, including MDY Group International Inc., a provider of records management software; Cybermation Inc., for workload automation software; Wily Technology Inc., for application management; and ilumin Software Services Inc., for email archiving software.
Industry analysts note that CA has a long history of making technology acquisitions that rarely pan out into successful product lines over the long term. "Their record is pretty miserable as far as absorbing companies goes," said Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst with the Taneja Group. "They would lose 60% to 70% of the population."
Still, he said that CA is a different company today than it has been under previous CEOs and through the Securities and Exchange Commission investigations. "That is behind them … but the jury is still out until we see real integration of XOsoft." XOsoft has a solid customer base of more than 1,600 users in 42 countries, giving CA a decent start
CA said the first fruits of the integration will come this quarter with ARCserve triggering XOsoft's replication software. Next year CA expects to announce a single console for snapshot, replication, backup, CDP and failover.
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