Guest Column: Overland Storage's Acquisition Of Adaptec's Snap Server

A few months ago when I spoke to Jeff Graham, Overland Storage's Senior Product Manager, he indicated that Overland Storage was exploring the possibility of adding NAS as an option to its disk-based backup line. Based on this morning's announcement that it has acquired Adaptec's Snap Server NAS line of products, it is obvious that Overland Storage saw an even more urgent need to add NAS to its product portfolio than Jeff originally indicated.

But is the Snap Server NAS line of products the right acquisition for Overland Storage to make? It's no secret that Adaptec has had this line of products on the market for at least a couple of years. TechWorld reported as far back as July 2006 that Adaptec was allegedly seeking to "offload" this entire division so it could focus on its core ASIC and HBA disk controller products. Even prior to that in 2003, Quantum apparently had the same mindset before it sold it to Snap Appliances which was in turn acquired by Adaptec. Further, with Microsoft Windows Storage Server having a reputation as a solid performer in the SMB NAS market, why not just partner with Microsoft and go down that path?