EMC Coughs Up for Kashya

EMC acquired startup Kashya for $153 million today to try and boost its Invista virtualization product while adding to its continuous data protection (CDP) and heterogeneous replication platforms. (See EMC Pays $153M for Kashya.)

Kashya's KBX500 appliance handles remote and local replication and CDP for disaster recovery. (See Kashya Unveils Next-Gen CDP.) Although sold as an appliance, the company will join EMC as part of its Software Group.

The price tag may be steep for a company that raised $22 million in funding over three rounds and was barely a year into generating revenue. But Kashya claims about 75 customers, and its technology could help EMC plug missing pieces into the Invista platform.

Mark Geel, marketing director for EMC's storage infrastructure group, says EMC will sell Kashya's current product as a standalone appliance while integrating Kashya's software into EMC wares. He expects Kashya technology to provide remote replication for Invista by the end of this year.

Like the Invista appliance, Kashya's box is an out-of-band, split-path architecture product. (See Spaid Breaks Ground.) It also is qualified to work with the intelligent switches from Brocade and Cisco that support Invista."This gives Invista true life," says analyst Arun Taneja of the Taneja Group. "There aren't that many really good split-path architecture products, and that's the technology Invista needs. I'm a little surprised at the price tag, but not the acquisition."

When EMC launched Invista last May, it promised remote replication and CDP in future releases. (See EMC Unveils Invista.) Those missing features -- especially the former -- are likely among the reasons Invista hasn't picked up many customers yet. At the EMC user conference last month, executives said Invista is just starting to find its way into customer sites.

Geel says remote replication has been high on the Invista wish list. "Certainly our customers have been asking for it," he says.

Geel says EMC will eventually use Kashya's CDP in its Legato NetWorker, Replication Manager, and RecoverPoint data protection products. He says Kashya technology will replace software that EMC gets from an OEM deal with Mendocino Software in its RecoverPoint CDP appliance. (See EMC Pulls Forward With Backup.)

Kashya will also broaden EMC's heterogeneous replication capabilities outside of Invista. EMC sells array-based Open Replicator, which moves data between its Symmetrix enterprise SAN systems and other vendors' arrays. EMC also offers SAN Copy to do the same for its Clariion midrange systems. And it sells RepliStor to move files among heterogeneous arrays. All of the foregoing, however, comprise array-to-array replication over the SAN. Kashya can replicate block data from SANs over IP WAN links for disaster recovery, representing a first for EMC.Anthony Ercolino, VP of data center operations for supply chain management firm TradeCard Inc., says he liked that Kashya was IP network-based when he purchased four appliances for disaster recovery last year. TradeCard is an EMC Clariion customer and picked Kashya over software alternatives from EMC and Veritas.

"We looked at EMC's solution," Ercolino says. "It was good, but networked-based replication minimized bandwidth and performance issues. It also cost less than array-based solutions. Network-based replication takes the impact and everything off the host. It doesnt affect the host and doesn’t affect the SAN."

Kashya appliances are priced at $50,000 and up.

EMC says Kashya's 75 employees in San Jose, Calif., and Israel will be offered positions with EMC, with Kashya CEO Michael Lewin reporting to the EMC VP of software infrastructure, Doc D'Errico.

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and SwitchOrganizations mentioned in this article: