IBM Fixes Sights on FilesX

IBM has signed an agreement to acquire privately held Israeli CDP specialist FilesX in a deal rumored to be worth up to $90 million.

Although IBM has not revealed the financial terms of the deal, Israeli news Website Globes puts its value at between $70 million and $90 million.

In a statement released this morning, Al Zollar, general manager of IBMs Tivoli software division, explained that the FilesX deal will beef up the Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM).

”The FilesX acquisition would complement IBM’s vision of enterprise data protection by adding critical capabilities for remote offices, delivering continuous data protection for applications and servers, and supporting business user needs with nearly instantaneous recovery of data,” he said.

“It would also reinforce IBM’s mid-market strategy by adding a simple and easy-to-use full data protection solution -- one that also is attractive to enterprise remote offices and departmental situations.”FilesX, which competes with Symantec, Availl, and Double-Take/TimeSpring, touts its flagship Xpress Restore software as a way to eliminate traditional backup windows, by continually catching changes in data.

In its statement this morning, IBM identified Xpress Restore as complementary to Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files, which is targeted at SMBs and individual PC users.

At this stage, IBM is still keeping other details of the acquisition close to its chest, including its integration roadmap.

”The deal is expected to close shortly,” says IBM spokeswoman Meredith Hannon, but she was unable to reveal whether FilesX CEO Jimmy Garcia-Meza and the rest of the startup's 45-strong workforce will be joining IBM at that time: "We haven’t closed [the deal], so those specifics haven’t been decided yet."

Files X, which is based in Newton, Mass., and Haifa, Israel, has racked up 100 customers since it was founded in 2000, including the U.S. State Department and Massachusetts liberal arts college Amherst.IBM and FilesX were not exactly strangers prior to today's announcement. In a possible precursor to the acquisition, the Xpress Restore software was certified with IBM’s storage offerings last year .

This is the second time this year that IBM has grabbed an Israeli storage startup. In January, the vendor bought clustering startup XIV for an undisclosed fee, and it has also been linked to a rumored acquisition of de-dupe specialist Diligent.

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