IBM Picks Up Remote Data Backup Help

IBM announced April 10 that it has acquired FilesX, a privately held storage software company based in Newton, Mass., and Haifa, Israel, that specializes in continuous data protection for enterprises with remote or branch offices.

Financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close within the next several weeks, IBM Director of Storage Software Kelly Beavers told eWEEK.

FilesX brings to IBM an "advanced data protection technique," Beavers said, that Big Blue had to a certain extent in its Tivoli Data Protection Suite but did not do quite well enough -- remote office backup and replication.

"FilesX has a patented technique they call 'Instant Recovery,'" Beavers said. "IBM being IBM, we're going to rebrand it 'Near-Instant Recovery' ... nonetheless, when a file server goes down or offline, this feature reroutes the data line from the affected server directly to the backup server in a matter of seconds. Most of the time the users won't even know there was a [backend] problem."

FilesX, whose flagship product, Xpress Restore CDP, is designed specifically for file servers, can keep applications up and running without discord as a result of this fast recovery process, Beavers said.

FilesX's products will join Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files, which is designed for laptop and desktop usage, in the IBM catalog, Beavers said.

FilesX, founded in 2000, employs 44 people and has more than 100 customers in the United States and Israel, spanning government, education, health care, financial services and manaufacturing, Beavers said.