IBM Signs Agreement to Acquire FilesX

IBM today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire FilesX, a privately held storage software company based in Newton, Mass., and Haifa, Israel, that specializes in continuous data protection and nearly instant data and application recovery software for enterprises and remote/branch offices. The acquisition is expected to close shortly. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The proliferation of data and information across the distributed enterprise are causing businesses of all sizes to seek better data recovery and information risk management solutions. FilesX products help address this need by delivering continuous data protection and fast recovery of business critical applications and servers running on Microsoft Windows platforms. Following close, IBM intends that the FilesX technology will become part of the Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) family of products, IBM’s flagship suite of leading data protection and information infrastructure offerings, with proven compatibility in customer environments today.

FilesX enterprise-level continuous data protection solutions would complement IBM's existing file-based software called IBM Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files, which is targeted at SMB customers and individual PC users.

With its patented technology, FilesX helps IT staff restore data from virtually any type of failure and from nearly any point in time. Ease-of-use and self-managing features make FilesX offerings particularly attractive in environments where IT skills and budgets are limited.

For IT managers dealing with the pressures of data growth, and for chief compliance officers seeking better data controls, the acquisition should enable IBM to offer an end-to-end data protection solution from laptops to remote/branch offices, data centers and disaster recovery sites. Across the enterprise, customizable data protection features in both disk-based and tape-based environments are designed to improve data governance and provide nearly continuous user access to data even in the face of IT disruptions.

“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,” said Al Zollar, general manager, Tivoli software, IBM. “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 has more than 100 customers in the United States and Israel, spanning government, education, healthcare, financial services and manufacturing. “Following the close of the transaction, the combination of FilesX' strong data protection and recovery software with IBM’s existing storage management products will enable customers to better safeguard their most critical information,” said Jimmy Garcia-Meza, FilesX CEO. “FilesX customers can benefit from the broad resources IBM has committed to growing the storage management part of its business, and will continue to receive support under their existing agreements."

Beyond the expanded data and application protection that the FilesX acquisition would provide, existing IBM customers would see no change to their current TSM environment, product set or support.