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Actifio Names Former IBM System Storage VP Jim Sullivan As President

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Actifio today announced that Jim Sullivan has been named president.

In this role, Sullivan leads go-to-market activities for Actifio as it establishes leadership in an entirely new class of storage.

Most recently, Sullivan was vice president, worldwide sales, IBM System Storage.

Actifio has pioneered the industry’s first storage system optimized for managing copies of production data, eliminating redundant silos of IT infrastructure and data management applications.

Prior to it being acquired by IBM, Sullivan served as president of XIV, a market leader of next generation storage arrays.

Sullivan also had an outstanding 12-year tenure at EMC where he executed one of the storage industry’s fastest growths in sales, holding numerous leadership positions and culminating in the role of senior vice president of sales. Sullivan also served on the Board at AppIQ (acquired by HP) and Diligent (acquired by IBM), and is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization devoted to the professional and personal growth of business leaders around the world.

By introducing virtualization into data management, Actifio delivers an application-centric, SLA-driven solution that decouples the management of data from storage, network and server infrastructure and reduces costs by 10X. Actifio is proving to be the best data management solution for the virtual server environment and is being rapidly deployed in VMware environments.

IBM Snaps Up Storage Provider Diligent Technologies

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IBM today announced it has acquired Diligent Technologies, a privately held storage “de-duplication” technology company headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts with research and development located in Tel Aviv, Israel. Diligent’s technologies and employees will become part of the IBM System Storage business unit of the IBM Systems and Technology Group. Financial terms were not disclosed, but The Register picked up rumors the deal was in the $200 million price range.

Diligent develops in-line data de-duplication software that is integrated with server and storage infrastructures to help organizations significantly reduce the amount and cost of physical storage required in data centers. From the press release:

Data de-duplication is an emerging technology that organizations are investing in today and Diligent’s innovative technology provides a single solution to support data protection, archive and data-retention applications – all while maintaining the integrity of the data.

The Diligent acquisition will be an important part of IBM’s New Enterprise Data Center model, which helps clients improve IT efficiency and facilitates the rapid deployment of new IT services for future business growth. The new model is based on best practices for virtualization, green IT, service management and cloud computing.

The acquisition of Diligent maps to the overall IBM enterprise strategy of developing more efficient, cost effective data centers and will further extend IBM’s storage portfolio.Combined with IBM, Diligent’s data de-duplication technology and solutions will:

  • address the unique data de-duplication requirements of enterprise clients for maximum in-line performance, scalability and data integrity;
  • complement clients’ installed backup/recovery applications (e.g. Tivoli Storage Manager and others);
  • reduce the amount of time required to backup and recover information;
  • enable the economical electronic transmission of back-up and archive data from primary to remote disaster recovery sites;
  • reduce the amount of physical storage required to help reduce costs and energy consumption

“Diligent’s data de-duplication software is a critical technology that will be integrated into the IBM Storage portfolio to further extend our information infrastructure strategy, allowing our clients to eliminate redundant data and streamline the infrastructure required to support their business – which can result in dramatic improvements in data center efficiency,” said Andy Monshaw, general manager, IBM System Storage. “Diligent’s industry-proven data de-duplication offerings are exceptionally suited for mid-range and enterprise clients, uniquely combining in-line performance, scalability and data integrity and extends IBM’s strong portfolio of strategic offerings that will help our clients reduce infrastructure costs, improve energy efficiency in the data center, and enable them to fully utilize their information on demand.”

Diligent will become part of the IBM System Storage brand of offerings.

Earlier this month, IBM announced its intent to acquire FilesX, a provider of continuous data protection software for mission-critical applications and remote offices.

Diligent, which has secured close to $47 million in funding, previously served as EMC’s Israel research and development lab before being spun-out from the storage firm in 2002.