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Tape library and management software maker Overland Storage Inc. has acquired Okapi Software Inc., which makes backup appliances, for $5 million, officials announced Thursday.
“Customers absolutely want to use disks to back up today. They still want ultimately to get the data out to tape [but] they dont want to have to change their infrastructure,” Overland CEO and President Christopher Calisi said, in an interview today.
Okapis current D2D Backup Accelerator Appliance, in its ipXcelerator family, will be rebranded with the San Diego, Calif.-based Overland name in early August, Calisi said.
Also, “They have a patent pending that allows this appliance to stream information to it, and then as soon as thats finished backing up, to be handed off to a process that moves it out to tape immediately,” and that uses iSCSI, he added. That saves the appliance from having to link to the original server, but in some cases it may require users to buy more licenses from their backup vendor, he noted.
Okapis products are currently for Windows only, but there will soon be a Linux version, said John Matze, Okapis founder, CEO, and president, and now Overland vice president and CTO. “Were also looking at Solaris and waiting primarily for the iSCSI drivers to show up,” he said.
Future integration between the appliance and Overlands storage resource management software will include new replication and snapshot functions, Calisi said.
The deal fits both companies because “We had launched a research team about a year ago that we sent out to live with customers. They met with about 60 customers worldwide to find out what there issues are with backup and recovery,” Calisi said. Meanwhile, Okapi, also of San Diego, signed just three customers since January, Matze added.
Talks with undisclosed OEM partners are ongoing, both officials said.
The $5 million is distributed as $2.5 million in Overland stock, $1.8 million in cash, and Overlands assumption of approximately $700,000 in liabilities, officials said. Okapi founder, president and CEO John Matze joins Overland as vice president and CTO, officials said.