Atempo Buys Storactive, Boosts Windows Backup Capability

Published: March 8, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Atempo this week gave a boost to its backup and recovery software for Windows and Exchange Server when it acquired Storactive, a Southern California provider of continuous data protection (CDP) solutions.

Prior to the acquisition, Atempo's flagship product, Time Navigator, distinguished itself on the recovery side of things, where it offered the very cool capability to "go back in time" and see their libraries and files as they existed in the past--a very handy feature to have when you need to restore a deleted or damaged file, but you don't know where to look. The software supported several methods of getting at the data, including snapshots taken using either Microsoft Shadow Copy software or technology from NetApp.

Now that it has acquired Storactive, Atempo has its own real-time data capture technology, and doesn't need to rely on the good graces of other technology vendors.

With its buy, Atempo gets LiveBackup, an automated backup solution for Windows desktops and laptops, and LiveServ for Exchange. The company had about 120 customers.

"This is an excellent example of one plus one equaling three," said Heidi Biggar, an analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. "Storactive has great CDP functionality but faced a huge uphill battle penetrating the market, while Atempo is already a trusted supplier focused on recovery. This move accelerates Atempo's ability to bring CDP features to market and adds some real meat to their 'trusted ILM' message."