Storage giant buys into enterprise-class data replication and protection

Storage vendor EMC has announced the acquisition of Kashya, a privately held provider of enterprise-class data replication and protection software.

The California-based company was acquired in a cash transaction valued at approximately $153m.

EMC said that the purchase is not expected to have a material impact on revenue for 2006, and that Kashya will be integrated immediately into the EMC Software Group.

Dave DeWalt, president of the EMC Software Group, said: "Information protection is a chief concern for customers today.

"This acquisition expands our market and gives us a key technology to extend our share of growing and strategic information infrastructure markets."

Kashya's Israel-based R&D operation will also form the core of a new EMC Israel Software Development Centre.

The company's disaster recovery and 'snap' replication technology will augment EMC Invista, the storage giant's flagship network-based block storage virtualisation offering.

Kashya also brings its continuous data protection technology to EMC to be used as the engine in future releases of EMC RecoverPoint.

Finally, through its current product set, Kashya allows EMC to expand its software portfolio for remote replication across heterogeneous environments.