IBM Acquires Diligent

ARMONK, N.Y. and FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- IBM today announced it has acquired Diligent Technologies, a privately held storage de-duplication” technology company headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts with research and development located in Tel Aviv, Israel. Diligent’s technologies and employees will become part of the IBM System Storage business unit of the IBM Systems and Technology Group. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Diligent develops in-line data de-duplication software that is integrated with server and storage infrastructures to help organizations significantly reduce the amount and cost of physical storage required in data centers. Enterprise and mid-sized organizations are faced with data centers that are reaching a breaking point of complexity and manageability, while at the same time experiencing explosive demands for storage for new data, transactions, email and back-up files.

Data de-duplication is an emerging technology that organizations are investing in today and Diligent’s innovative technology provides a single solution to support data protection, archive and data-retention applications – all while maintaining the integrity of the data.

The Diligent acquisition will be an important part of IBM’s New Enterprise Data Center model, which helps clients improve IT efficiency and facilitates the rapid deployment of new IT services for future business growth. The new model is based on best practices for virtualization, green IT, service management and cloud computing.

Research indicates that organizations are increasingly investing in data de-duplication solutions for e-mail, database and other storage-intensive and mission-critical applications. According to a recent study1 of 152 Fortune 1000 enterprises by TheInfoPro, 56 percent of those surveyed spent more on data de-duplication in 2007 when compared to 2006, and that increased spending trend is expected to continue in 2008.