When Strongbox bought Strongbox: Behind the Crossroads sale

Have you heard of ETI-NET? We hadn't either, yet it counts EMC as a customer for its data protection services, has more than 2,000 product installations worldwide, and it prompted the Strongbox archival product sale by Crossroads.

The sequence of events leading to the StrongBox sell-off has now become clearer. We understand that ETI-NET, a Canada-based Partner One Capital portfolio company, approached Crossroads after it encountered unhelpful rulings from the US Patent and Trademark Office, while enduring dreadful business results.

ETI-NET made an offer for all of Crossroads Strongbox and Sphinx products and assets. Crossroads and ETI-NET agreed a deal and SDS (Strongbox Data Solutions) was then set up in Austin, Texas, with Crossroads EVP David Cerf as its CEO, and 27 Strongbox staff transitioning from Crossroads to SDS.

The Sphinx products stayed with ETI-NET. In fact, the Sphinx acquisition was made by a wholly owned subsidiary of ETI-NET and “broadens the depth of solutions ETI-NET is able to offer large enterprises as they migrate from physical to virtual tape technology.

ETI-NET customers for its data protection and virtual tape products include all five of the top five banks in the USA, the top two credit card companies in the world, and the number one automaker, food distributor, oil company, telecom, insurance IT storage - yes, that would be EMC - and payment processor companies in the world – quite a list.

ETI-NET CEO Andy Hall said in a release: "ETI-NET is widely recognised for innovative product design and impeccable customer service. We are absorbing the functionality of VTS and Sphinx to broaden our access to enterprise server markets and provide incremental technology for our next-generation initiatives in backup, data protection and disaster recovery."

Guess we'll be paying more attention to ETI-NET in future. ®