OWC Acquires BRU Product Technologies and Customer Base

Woodstock, Ill., Nov. 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- OWC®; a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company and one of the world's most respected providers of Memory, External Drives, SSDs, Mac & PC docking solutions, announced it is in the final steps of completing the acquisition of the BRU™ product technologies and support of the ultra-reliable data backup, restore, and archival solutions for end-users and OEMs. Based on 35 years of legendary technology, BRU is the only genuinely cross-platform backup and archival solution that exists. The adoption of the BRU product line by OWC further establishes OWC as the provider of the most reliable backup and archival solutions available for both existing OWC and BRU customers and new. 

With local disk, tape storage, and enterprise-level cloud implications, BRU's reliability, and enhanced recoverability mechanisms, bring a new product definition to OWC's breath of storage and backup offerings. Because of BRU's stream-based, checksumming, anytime verify feature, the fully cross-platform verification comes standard. Any archive created on a BRU platform will read/restore on any other platform. The in-stream checksumming allows a BRU archive to be verified at any time without access to the original files, filesystem, or platform. The BRU archive format is entirely device-agnostic, allowing archives to be written to tape, disk, and cloud destinations. The BRU based solutions can be used to clone drive content, create a deep archive for offsite retention or perform daily backups of your corporate data infrastructure to a secure cloud environment. BRU provides extra security and reliability levels other backup solutions can't match. The BRU Server client-server architecture will be expanded to incorporate private and public cloud implementations as part of the OWC growing cloud strategy.  

All existing customers will be receiving direct communication regarding their support and upgrade paths within the coming weeks. 

"This acquisition acknowledges the importance of BRU and all that TOLIS Group provides," said Larry O'Connor, OWC Founder & CEO. "We are glad to ensure customers of this innovative platform's continuing support and development as part of the OWC lineup. With the acquisition and hiring of TOLIS founder Tim Jones as OWC's new Chief Solutions Architect, focused on software, cloud, and business solutions, we look forward to a long and bright future for this proven data technology. OWC will ensure this trusted technology will not just live on but will flourish and have a whole new level of support and engagement within the OWC lineup."

Rewriting BRU technology is exceptionally complementary to OWC's existing LTO solutions and included in future LTO products. M&E professionals, corporations, government, and small businesses face the same challenge: how to manage an ever-increasing amount of more complex data. Higher resolution, complex audio, and diverse formats are the project norm. Organizational content is projected to grow 50-70% annually as more data is digitalized. Licensing and regulatory compliance requirements are becoming more stringent. The answer, the Mercury Pro LTO family, provides top-end performance data integrity and utilizes industry-standard Thunderbolt (Type-C), providing plug and play ease of use on Thunderbolt 3 and future Thunderbolt 4 equipped computers.

The genesis of BRU in 1985 as a commercially available tool was driven by the inability of popular tar-based operations to reliably backup and restore archives on Unix systems. The BRU design mandate was to return the most data possible during a restore, limited only by physical damage. In January of 2005, bruAPP™ was born. The bruAPP backup appliance solution is a data backup and restore-focused appliance that delivers the industry's first truly "server-less" backup services across client/server system topologies. The bruAPP backup appliance virtually eliminates the configuration, installation, and compatibility issues when designing and building a data backup infrastructure. In January of 2010, BRU technologies entered further into the hardware market, providing one-stop shopping and support for tape and BRU software bundled offerings. In 2018, development of BRU™ Producer's Edition entered the Windows market for Windows desktops and enhanced capabilities were added to their BRU Server and its bruAPP backup appliance for Windows users. Launched in March of 2020, the BRU Producer's Edition replacement – ArGest® Backup for Windows, macOS, and Linux completed this evolution. 

"While turning out the lights at TOLIS Group due to the pandemic was the most difficult thing I've done in my business life, the closing of that the door has opened an exciting new one," said Tim Jones, OWC's new Chief Solutions Architect of Software, Cloud, and Business Solutions. "The opportunity to bring the BRU family of backup, archival, and storage solutions under the OWC banner will ensure continued growth, advancement, and support for existing and new users for many years to come. By leveraging OWC's breadth of products to enhance BRU capabilities, we will be able to bring many new storage, backup, and archival options to end-users as well as the worlds of business, research, education, and media and entertainment." Tim added, "The opportunity to join the executive team at Other World Computing offers amazing new challenges and growth opportunities, and I am very excited to join the OWC family and product teams."

About OWC  

Other World Computing (OWC), founded in 1988, is dedicated to helping Mac and PC enthusiasts do more and reach higher. We believe in sustainability and OWC solutions are truly built to last, go the distance, and enable users to maximize the technology investment they have already made. OWC's operation provides leadership in business sustainability, with our headquarters among the first in the world awarded LEED Platinum OWC features an award-winning technical support team as well as an unparalleled library of step-by-step DIY and informational videos. From the home desktop to the enterprise rack, the corporate backup to secure medical data, the recording studio to the motion picture set and beyond, there should be no compromise, and that is why OWC is here.  

About TOLIS GROUP, INC.  

TOLIS Group, Inc. storage management software and backup server appliances used to address tasks such as data backup, data protection, and disaster recovery. TOLIS' products include tools for Mac, Windows, Unix, and Linux environments based on its BRU™ technology. TOLIS has also moved into the hardware side of data protection with its platform-independent bruAPP™ data backup and restore appliance, disk-based storage, and tape solutions in both standalone and library automation formats. The company's customers come from a wide range of industries including financial services, education, health care, manufacturing, and consumer goods.  

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© 2020 Other World Computing, Inc. All rights reserved. Apple and Mac are the trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Intel and Thunderbolt are trademarks of Intel Corporation registered in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other marks may be the trademark or registered trademark property of their respective owners.  

SOURCE OWC

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