Connected Data and Drobo announced on Tuesday that the two companies had entered into a merger agreement. The combined company would be a homecoming of sorts for the Connected Data folks: Geoff Barrall founded both companies, and many of the employees of Connected Data left Drobo when he did.
Drobo on the left, Transporter on the right
(not to scale)
Drobo makes redundant, expandable, external storage solutions you can use on a network. You can read more in our review of the Thunderbolt Drobo unit.
Connected Data's launch product is called Transporter (it won an Editor's Choice Award at this year's Macworld/iWorld), which is essentially Dropbox without the cloud—you own the storage.
When we met with the Connected Data team in early 2013, they were up front about the fact that Transporter was, in many ways, similar to what Drobo was originally envisioned to be. It's unclear if the merger will result in Transporter functionality being folded into the Drobo product line or if the two products lines will remain separate.
We have reached out to both companies for more information, but have not yet heard back.
Terms of the agreement haven't been disclosed, and the companies said that they are currently in a 30-day due diligence period.