Acopia Plans NeoPath Buyback

An "end of sale" announcement about recently acquired NeoPath Networks products from Cisco has prompted Acopia to move in for the kill.

But it's open to question whether or not NeoPath customers will take the bait.

File-virtualization vendor Acopia, which competed with NeoPath prior to Cisco's purchase of that company last month, says it's ready to buy back whatever NeoPath customers have spent on their wares and apply that toward a replacement system from Acopia. (See Cisco Nabs NeoPath and Virtually Changed Landscape.)

"We'll apply 100 percent of the purchase price of NeoPath to the purchase of [our product]... That trade-in allowance is in addition to any Acopia discount," says Christopher Lynch, Acopia's CEO.

Neopath, which claimed roughly 50 customers prior to its acquisition, sold its File Director virtualization devices for about $45,000. Acopia's ARX series of file virtualization devices range from $25,000 to $250,000 and support CIFS and NFS in NAS or file servers.