EMC to buy California data-storage company
Rainfinity deal will expand firm's software line
Data-storage company EMC Corp. of Hopkinton is making another addition to its software portfolio, by purchasing privately held Rainfinity of San Jose, Calif. Rainfinity makes a product that allows companies to easily manage large numbers of storage devices.
''It adds some brand-new capabilities to our product line," said Tom Joyce, EMC's vice president of storage platforms marketing.
EMC is the dominant producer of high-end ''storage area networking" systems used by the world's largest businesses and government agencies to store vast well-organized databases.
The company is also a leader in the market for ''network-attached storage" systems, which are often used to store large amounts of less well-organized information, such as e-mail, photos, and medical X-rays.
''Management of the files becomes an absolute nightmare," said Arun Taneja, founder of the Taneja Group, a storage industry research firm in Hopkinton. ''Administrators have to do a tremendous amount of manual work."
Rainfinity makes a product that allows the seamless sharing of the data between the two types of systems. Information can be moved between storage devices to improve network performance and make the best use of available space.
''This lets you start moving file systems from one file server to another," said Joyce. ''The end user doesn't even need to know that anything is happening."
Earlier this year, EMC introduced Invista, a storage-management system for use with storage area networks. The Rainfinity deal will let the company offer similar capabilities to users of network-attached storage products. ''I'm sure EMC users will consider this to be an extremely welcome offering," Taneja said.
EMC would not provide financial details of the transaction, but said that it would pay ''less than $100 million" to acquire Rainfinity. The company and its 60 employees will remain in San Jose.
EMC also confirmed yesterday that it had purchased the assets of Maranti Networks, a maker of storage switches designed to speed up the movement of data between computers and storage systems. Financial details of the deal were not announced.
EMC shares fell 23 cents, or 1.71 percent, to close at $13.22 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 
