Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday it bought privately held archiving software company OuterBay for an undisclosed sum, in a move to bolster its storage, server, and software offerings and help its customers better manage their data.
said Tuesday it bought privately held archiving software company OuterBay for an undisclosed sum, in a move to bolster its storage, server, and software offerings and help its customers better manage their data.
HP’s stock rose $0.12 to $30.39 in recent trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Based in Cupertino, California, OuterBay will be integrated into HP’s StorageWorks division. Most of OuterBay’s 60 employees will be retained by HP. The deal is expected to be completed during the next two weeks.
Founded in 1997, OuterBay’s software helps customers monitor, forecast, and manage data growth—an important requirement today when the amount of data is multiplying rapidly within organizations. The database archiving market is growing at a 50 percent compound annual growth rate, according to HP.
OuterBay’s technology will complement HP’s portfolio of information life cycle management (ILM) products in the StorageWorks division, which helps businesses manage their information better.
Improving Performance
“[Database archiving] is designed to remove the clutter from the database environment—improving the performance of the database, increasing its speed and storage,” said Frank Harbist, vice president and general manager of ILM and storage software at HP’s StorageWorks division.
HP’s ILM unit was born one and a half years ago to help customers manage unstructured information such as email, documents, and files. This acquisition is a step forward in improving that strategy because OuterBay’s software helps companies manage their structured information stored in databases.
“Acquiring OuterBay allows us to accelerate our next step in database archiving,” Mr. Harbist said. “Small startups are first in introducing some of these emerging opportunities.”
HP started partnering with OuterBay a year ago and brought their technology to the market last fall.
Another benefit of this acquisition is that it is expected to produce synergies between HP’s server and storage divisions, said Mr. Harbist. The company intends to bundle OuterBay’s software with its other products and offer it to customers of its server division who run databases and applications on HP’s servers.
Last fall, HP made two other acquisitions to bolster its OpenView management software business and its storage division. In September, HP announced the $425-million acquisition of Peregrine Systems—a provider of software that manages IT systems (see HP Buys Peregrine for $425M).
HP Buys Peregrine for $425MThe same day, the company acquired AppIQ, which makes technology for managing storage area networks and storage resources (see HP Acquires AppIQ).
HP Acquires AppIQOuterBay currently has about 100 customers that include such companies as Motorola and Sun Microsystems. OuterBay has received $40 million in three rounds of venture funding so far and is financed by BA Venture Partners, Focus Ventures, Leapfrog Ventures, Mayfield, and Redpoint Ventures.
Sun Microsystems