Imation Corporation has established itself as a leading brand in the technology community on the strength of its portfolio of secure data storage solutions. But to ensure its products remain relevant in a rapidly evolving industry, company officials have announced the acquisition of intellectual assets from data deduplication specialist Nine Technology.

As organizations around the world struggle to store and analyze growing streams of digital information, Imation's latest bit of IP strategy may prove especially lucrative. The data deduplication software engine acquired in the deal essentially offers companies faster recovery from network disasters and the ability to greatly reduce IT infrastructure costs.

"Imation needs block-level deduplication to compete effectively in the new world order, and Nine Technology is the right partner at the right time," explained market analyst Steve Duplessie. "The combination of Imation's global reach and recent storage and security investments create a potent opportunity."

Earlier this year, researchers from International Data Corporation revealed that enterprise IT teams will be required to manage 50 times more data by the end of the decade than they do today. As a result, companies are already hard at work searching for innovative and cost effective approaches to data management such as the proposed solution on display at Imation.