Network Appliance acquires Topio

Storage appliance vendor Network Appliance has bought disaster recovery software firm Topio in a $160 million all-cash deal.

Topio makes software that replicates, recovers, and protects data over any distance regardless of the underlying server or storage infrastructure. The company is based in Santa Clara, California but has extensive R&D facilities in Haifa, Israel.

The deal will allow NetApp to expand its heterogeneous data protection portfolio.

Jay Kidd, senior vice president and general manager, Emerging Products Group, Network Appliance said with the average enterprise creating and storing anywhere between 10 and 20 copies of its data, the Topio deal would allow enterprises using legacy storage systems to create working data copies in seconds while "dramatically decreasing overall storage requirements."

Rene Millman is a freelance writer and broadcaster who covers cybersecurity, AI, IoT, and the cloud. He also works as a contributing analyst at GigaOm and has previously worked as an analyst for Gartner covering the infrastructure market. He has made numerous television appearances to give his views and expertise on technology trends and companies that affect and shape our lives. You can follow Rene Millman on Twitter.