Microsoft has acquired InMage, a San Jose, Calif.-based data protection software company, the software and cloud services giant announced July 11. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
InMage’s software provides backup, disaster recovery and continuous data protection services for cloud environments. Scout, the firm’s software, captures data changes as they occur in real-time with practically zero impact on production servers. In addition, it can provide local backup and remote replication services using a single stream of data, further driving IT efficiency.
InMage also makes hardware for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). The company’s 4000 Series of backup and disaster recovery appliances, launched in October, is aimed at organizations with petabyte-size data protection requirements.
Going forward, the company’s tech will be used to bolster Microsoft Azure’s business backup and data recovery capabilities. “Microsoft is now working to integrate the InMage Scout technology into Azure Site Recovery service, in order to give customers a simple, cost-effective way to ensure business continuity with the power and scale of the Azure global cloud,” a Microsoft spokesperson told eWEEK.
InMage’s existing customers can continue using the company’s products, Microsoft said. Post-acquisition, Scout is being made available through Azure Site Recovery.
In a statement, Microsoft said the deal will accelerate its “strategy to provide hybrid cloud business continuity solutions for any customer IT environment, be it Windows or Linux, physical or virtualized on Hyper-V, VMware or others.” It may also help cement Microsoft Azure’s reputation (formerly Windows Azure) as a platform-agnostic cloud platform.
“This will make Azure the ideal destination for disaster recovery for virtually every enterprise server in the world,” stated the company. Microsoft also feels that those capabilities will help pave the way for VMware customers that are considering “permanently migrating their applications to the cloud.”
It’s not the first time Microsoft has dipped into its coffers to help flesh out Azure’s IT capabilities.
In May, Microsoft announced that it was rolling out the welcome mat for high-performance computing (HPC) and big data workloads by acquiring New Zealand-based GreenButton for an undisclosed amount. “Using GreenButton’s solutions, applications can be cloud-enabled quickly without recoding existing software—and without a Ph.D. in computer science,” said Mike Neil, a Microsoft Azure general manager.
GreenButton’s Cloud Fabric, an on-demand service that provides subscribers with practically unlimited cloud processing power, is the brainchild of the firm’s CEO, Scott Houston. Serving as CTO of Weta Digital, the video production company best known for Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy, Houston sought ways of automating the process of provisioning massive, compute-intensive workloads that are typical in effect-heavy films. The result was Cloud Fabric, which is now being integrated into Azure to deliver cloud-based “Big Compute” solutions.
In 2012, Microsoft acquired StorSimple, a maker of storage appliances. On July 9, the company unveiled its Azure StorSimple 8000 line of hybrid storage arrays that provide cloud-enabled automatic capacity expansion and offsite data protection.