Gresham Sells ETL Software and IP to Tributary Systems

November 3, 2009 Alex Woodie

Gresham Enterprise Storage, the Austin, Texas-based subsidiary of Gresham Computing that has been pushing its virtual tape library (VTL) solutions into the Power System and System i markets lately, has sold its VTL software product and all related intellectual property (IP) to Tributary Systems, it was announced last week.

Tributary Systems Inc. (TSI) says it has acquired all of the assets related to Storage Director, the core piece of technology that turned a regular storage array into a VTL device. The Dallas, Texas, company was an OEM partner of Gresham, and included its Storage Director technology in its own VTL solutions. Other terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Gresham Enterprise Storage had been aggressively marketing Storage Director, which it also called Clareti Storage Director, into the System i user base. The company raised its standing among System i shops earlier this year when it attended the COMMON conference in Reno, Nevada. It had also cemented a deal with Quantum to leverage the storage giant’s data de-duplication technology in System i VTL deals, and even had the connection certified.

Now, TSI will be taking over Gresham’s position in the market and pushing VTL solutions into the System i customer base with its Storage Director-powered VTL offering, which it calls Virtual Integrated Tape and Library, or ViTAL.

“With the acquisition of the Storage Director IP and product, Tributary Systems has enhanced its capability to meet customer requirements in a much broader market segment,” says Shawn Sabanayagam, president and CEO of TSI. “We fundamentally believe that the ViTAL and Storage Director products are the most technically advanced storage virtualization solutions in the marketplace today and we intend to build on that position.”