EMC has acquired another software vendor, its fourth this year. This time round it's swallowed Californian data backup and recovery specialist Avamar Technologies for $165m cash.

EMC is betting on storage customers continuing to swallow the "demise of tape backup" line. Avamar's software is aimed at improving the efficiency of backup to disk by de-duplicating data on its way to the archive. Avamar claims up to a 300:1 data reduction.

EMC Information Management Software SVP Mark Sorenson, who will be in charge of Avamar when it becomes part of EMC's storage product operations group in the next 30 days, said: "The overwhelming value proposition of backup-to-disk is getting stronger by the day.

"Most recently, the limitations of tape-based backup have inspired the creation of new technology such as data de-duplication to significantly alter the cost and efficiency equation for disk-based backup."

EMC said its latest toy would not have an impact on 2006 revenues. ®

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