EMC tops NetApp's offer for Data Domain

Jake Widman
Wednesday, 03 June 2009 01:37

IT Industry - Strategy

EMC has offered US$30 per share to acquire deduplication specialist Data Domain. The amount is five dollars a share higher than the NetApp offer already on the table.

On May 20, storage and data management provider NetApp though it had a deal to acquire all the outstanding shares of Data Domain for $1.5 billion, or $25 per share.

Data Domain provides deduplication storage systems; the company claims that its technology reduces storage requirements by ten to thirty times.

NetApp offers heterogeneous (disk- and tape-based) storage systems and saw the Data Domain acquisition as the key to the growing disk-based backup market.

The deal was far enough along that the May 20 announcement called it a "definitive agreement."

EMC, however, doesn't think that "definitive agreement" means "done deal."

The provider of "information infrastructure" (read storage, management, and security) systems has jumped in with a $1.8 billion offer, or $30 per share.

For more on EMC's proposal, see Page 2.