EMC Adds Avamar In Acquisition Spree

Rounding out its acquisition spree to an even dozen this year, information lifecycle management and storage specialist EMC on Wednesday announced plans to buy Avamar Technologies, a provider of data protection software.

EMC plans to acquire Avamar in a cash transaction valued at $165 million. The deal is expected to close by the end of the month. In total, EMC has spent about $2.8 billion on a dozen acquisitions in 2006.

Avamar provides data backup and deduplication software, letting customers more easily migrate from traditional tape to disk-based recovery, said Mark Sorenson, senior VP of information management software for EMC.

"The overwhelming value proposition of backup-to-disk is getting stronger by the day," Sorenson said in a statement. "The limitations of tape-based back have inspired the creation of new technology such as data de-duplication to significantly alter the cost and efficiency equation for disk-based backup."

Avamar's software utilizes data deduplication technology to back up data only once on a global basis. The software identifies redundant data segments, reducing the amount of network bandwidth used and data stored.

The Avamar acquisition comes as EMC seems to be straining under the weight of its previous acquisitions.

Earlier this month, EMC said it would cut 1,250 jobs in an effort to complete the integration of its previous acquisitions.

For the third quarter of 2006, ending Sept. 30, EMC reported improved revenues for the quarter and nine months of the year, but earnings declined. For the third quarter, EMC reported earnings of $284 million on revenue of $2.8 billion, compared to earnings of $422 million on revenue of $2.4 billion.