Bycast bought by rival NetApp

Sunnyvale’s NetApp announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire rival Vancouver-based Bycast Inc. in an all-cash transaction.

Founded more than 10 years ago, Bycast has helped more than 250 customers worldwide dramatically improve their operational efficiency and reduce the administrative burden of managing massive quantities of data across multiple geographies.

Bycast extends NetApp’s leadership position in unified storage by adding an object-based storage software offering. Object-based storage is a new and emerging approach to storing and accessing data based on object names and rich metadata that describes the content in greater detail, which simplifies the task of large-scale object storage while improving the ability to quickly search and locate data objects.

“We are excited and look forward to joining the NetApp team,” said Moe Kermani, CEO of Bycast. “We share a complementary vision and a common dedication to excellence. Together we will offer customers the best-in-class content repository solutions that further their drive toward a unified storage infrastructure.”

The all-cash transaction is pegged in the $50-100 Million range leaving Bycast investors Growthworks and BDC Venture Capital likely smiling about this exit.

In 2003 Bycast raised $10 Million of which Growthworks invested a total of $7.7 Million through its Working Opportunity and Access Fund.