SafeData Gets Bought by Data Storage

June 29, 2010 Alex Woodie

SafeData, a provider of hosted backup, recovery, and high availability solutions for i/OS, AIX, and Windows, has been acquired by Data Storage Corp. (DSC), the companies announced yesterday. DSC says it has aggressive plans to bring its current offerings–including online backup and recovery, digital archiving, and e-discovery–to the System i world, as a result of SafeData’s knowledge and experience with the IBM i platform.

DSC has been providing hosted network solutions since it was founded in August 2001. The company, which is headquartered in Garden City, New York, provides a range of services, including data backup and recovery, digital archiving, virtual hosting and standby data recovery, e-discovery, e-mail archiving, and hosted exchange.

Much of DSC’s business is connected to data centers, including a network operations center (NOC) in Long Island, New York, and a disaster recovery center in South Florida. The company takes pains to ensure firewalls, power supplies, and redundant network connections are in place. Last year, its online backup and recovery services were awarded the ISO 9001:2000 certification as a result of its efforts.

While DSC has been focused on open systems platforms up to this point, the acquisition of SafeData does much to expand the company’s growth into the System i world. “With SafeData’s penetration in the IBM iSeries market and its extensive client base, it was a logical addition,” DSC CEO and chairman Chuck Piluso states in a press release. “As part of the acquisition, we extended our service offerings, and gained the expertise of an excellent team of talented data storage and recovery professionals.”

SafeData’s primary business has been providing online backup and recovery for System i customers. A couple of years ago the company added hosted high availability (through a partnership with Vision Solutions) to the mix. The company also offers online backup and recovery for Windows and AIX systems.

DSC says it will operate SafeData as a division out of its current location in Warwick, Rhode Island. SafeData president Peter Briggs will continue to manage the SafeData unit as executive vice president with DSC, while Larry Putterman, SafeData chairman, will serve on DSC’s board of directors.

Briggs says this is an exciting time for SafeData. “DSC brings us a platform for scaling and growth, which will make it possible for us to extend our market presence across the country and will provide greater breadth and depth to our data storage and recovery services for our clients,” he states in a press release. “As a unit of DSC, we will now have additional resources to help take SafeData to the next level.”

Both companies are privately held, and specific terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.