IBM has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Aspera.
Licensed to clients and partners either in the Cloud or on premise, Aspera's high-speed transfer technology aims to reduces transmission of large files or data sets. The company says it overcomes inherent bottlenecks in broadband wide area networks that slow the transfer of large files, such as high-definition video or scientific research files, over long distances.
Typical data transfers over TCP/IP are hampered by network delays or packet loss, even over the fastest broadband networks. Aspera’s fasp protocol delivers high speeds over any network link regardless of file size, transfer distance or network conditions.
By combining Aspera with cloud computing, customers have a practical way to transport big data files to and from the cloud. Aspera’s fasp technology will be integrated with IBM’s recently acquired SoftLayer cloud infrastructure later next year.
‘With this acquisition, IBM addresses a key challenge for globally integrated enterprises by allowing them to move large data files much faster to the individuals who need them, wherever in the world they may be.’ said John Mesberg, vice president for B2B and commerce solutions.
This acquisition builds on IBM’s 'Smarter Commerce' initiative by allowing businesses to accelerate their digital supply chains between partners and suppliers. This also extends IBM’s market-leading capabilities in managed file transfer with a complementary set of capabilities to help enterprises further gain control and oversight of their data transfers.
The acquisition of Aspera is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the first quarter 2014.
