Vendor Weaves A Niche Storage Strategy

Fabrik Inc. is advancing its strategy to provide niche storage solutions for vertical industries with the acquisition of G-Technology Inc., which just pushed out a 1TB portable external drive for the “creative” Macintosh enterprise.

It’s the second major technology buy-up in just about a year for the two-year-old storage and Web services company. Last February, Fabrik purchased the consumer line of Simple Tech aimed at small-office/home-office and SMB  Windows shops. The G-Tech move is just the start of several expected technology acquisitions, says Mike Cordano, Fabrik CEO and co-founder.

“We are excited by this latest acquisition as G-Tech is a company we plan to invest heavily in and energize. We’re looking to provide vertical storage products for several different markets including the SMB market,” Cordano told InternetNews.com. He says Fabrik provides storage products with specific features and functionality that traditional storage products don’t provide.

“We’re not selling generic storage. Our message and product is very specific and we’re extending beyond what they’re [traditional storage providers] offering. Our goal is to bridge the gap,” he says.

G-Tech’s customers are heavy users of multimedia content and those working in pre- and post-production digital houses that use Final Cut Pro, Apple’s multimedia software. The storage solutions are specifically built for high-definition video editing and other graphics-heavy applications.

G-Tech’s latest product offering, the G-RAID mini with RAID 0, features a triple FireWIRE 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interface for connectivity to both Mac and PC desktops.

In addition, G-Tech has also pushed out a G-DRIVE mini Triple 500, a portable drive offering audio/video enterprises 500GB of storage. Weighing just 10 ounces, the drive can store 45 hours of HD video, 200,000 photos or 125,000 MP3 files.

Pricing on both products, which will be available in March, has not been released.

One industry analyst said the G-Tech acquisition bodes well for Fabrik and current product users.

For Fabrik the acquisitions “show its commitment” to storage, and that “they’re thinking outside the box in terms of being an innovator and product designer. Small players [in the storage industry] really have to differentiate themselves with product and design and Fabrik is doing that,” Wolfgang Schlichting, an IDC research director, told InternetNews.com.

“The users should see an economy of scale that they can leverage with Fabrik behind these acquired companies,” Schlichting added.