IBM agreed to acquire Aspera, a start-up that offers software for accelerating data transfers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Aspera claims its transfer technology can reduces transmission times for large files or data sets by up to 99.9 percent – potentially cutting a 26 hour transfer of a 24 gigabyte file, sent halfway around the world, down to just 30 seconds.
Aspera’s “fasp” is a protocol designed to overcome problems with TCP regardless of packet loss, latency or file size. The software is licensed to clients and partners either in the cloud or on premise. Customers include “virtually all the major broadcast television networks, Hollywood studios and CG/animation houses.”
“Our team has redefined how the world’s biggest data can be moved quickly, securely and reliably around the world,” said Michelle Munson, president and co-founder, Aspera. “By tapping into IBM’s innovative capabilities and global resources, we will solve ever expanding data movement challenges for our customers now and in the future.”
IBM said the Aspera technology is suitable for cloud services and will be integrated with IBM’s recently acquired SoftLayer cloud infrastructure later next year.
- Aspera is based in Emeryville, California. The company is headed by Michelle Munson, who previously was a software engineer in research and start-up companies including the IBM Almaden Research center before founding Aspera in 2004.
