WD®, a  Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company, announced an expansion of its product  portfolio addressing small- and medium-sized businesses with the addition of  network backup software and appliances from Arkeia® Software, Inc.,  a privately held data protection company based in Carlsbad, Calif., recently  acquired by WD. WD also announced that the Arkeia Network Backup version 10.0  software, for which a  release candidate was delivered in Dec. 2012, becomes generally available  (www.arkeia.com/new-in-v100)  today.

     “Arkeia’s products expand  WD’s growing product portfolio of  solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses,” said Jim Welsh, executive  vice president and general manager of WD’s Branded and CE products. “SMB  organizations are managing ever-growing  volumes of critical business data, which need to be stored, shared and secured.  Our easy-to-manage small storage server, WD Sentinel™ DX4000, provides backup  and storage centralization capabilities for small businesses and workgroups,  while Arkeia’s network backup  software  provides a more feature-rich data-protection solution for larger SMB customers.”

     Arkeia’s software, appliances and virtual  appliances back up data to disk, tape and cloud storage. The company’s patented  Progressive Deduplication™ technology speeds hybrid-cloud backup by reducing  the bandwidth necessary to replicate backup sets over wide area networks.  Arkeia sells its products worldwide through resellers and managed service  providers.

     The acquisition was completed through a  merger transaction, encompassing all of the employees, technology and products  of Arkeia. Arkeia will be integrated into WD’s Branded Products SMB unit and  the products initially will retain the Arkeia name. WD will support all Arkeia  customers on current maintenance and plans to retain both Arkeia’s software and  appliance product lines. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

     “Joining WD gives the Arkeia team a great  opportunity to accelerate adoption of Arkeia’s innovative technologies and  products,” said Bill Evans, senior director of worldwide software marketing at  WD and former CEO of Arkeia Software. “The Arkeia team is delighted to be a  part of WD. WD has chosen an ideal moment to invest in this critical product  category as backup-to-disk solutions accelerate their displacement of  backup-to-tape. WD’s financial strength, engineering excellence and  organizational discipline will take Arkeia’s products and customers to the next level.”

Arkeia  Network Backup v10.0 General Availability

     Arkeia Network Backup v10.0 enables hybrid  cloud backups by allowing administrators to combine physical media and Internet  transport to replicate backup sets to or from remote cloud storage. Leveraging  Arkeia’s advanced Progressive Deduplication
technology,  Arkeia Network Backup v10.0 permits SMB organizations to protect large data volumes  in the cloud without incurring high monthly bandwidth charges. By allowing  large backup sets to be moved on physical media and small backup sets to be  sent over the wire, Arkeia makes it practical to replicate backup sets from a  LAN to remote cloud storage for an inexpensive, tape-free alternative to off-site  backup and recovery. More information can be found at: www.wd.com and www.arkeia.com.