HDS Validates Archiving Purchase

February 7, 2007: In what Hitachi labels as a strategic move to strengthen their content services initiatives, Hitachi Data Systems has snapped up Archivas, a digital archiving solutions provider.

Hitachi has today announced its signature on the definitive agreement to acquire the privately held Massachusetts based company. While the official financial terms have not yet been disclosed, the rumour mill has the figure pinned around US$120 million.

HDS says it’s a move designed to bolster the evolution of their content management services. Gary Voight, CEO of Archivas has labelled it as a “formidable attack on the content management space.” Archivas’ existing customer base and technologies looks set to provide a comfortable platform for HDS growth.

The move also marks the increased investment on an emerging space under increasing regulatory compliance pressures. HDS says that in particular, there is a rapidly growing market demand for digital archiving solutions that deliver enterprise scalability, data protection and management.

HDS compares the move to their leap into and later dominance in the storage virtualisation space. With this latest announcement, the vendor says it’s planning to elevate the competitive playing field in the digital data archiving market.

HDS has already deployed Archivas’ technology in its Hitachi Content Archive Platform and the acquisition looks set to further broaden the reach of this solution.

Slowly but surely, end-users are recognising the benefits of storing and managing information online. It’s big business for vendors and one that HDS appears keen to get a hand in on with this latest acquisition.

Comment on this story.