Caleido AG, parent company of online storage service Wuala, announced Thursday it has merged with computer peripheral maker LaCie. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Wuala is an online storage service that operates across multiple platforms including Mac OS X, using a Java-based client application. Billing itself as “the social online storage,” Wuala enables users to store and back up photos, videos, music and other types of content online — which you can then share with family and friends.
LaCie is the French manufacturer of external storage devices and other products well-known to Mac users for their hard drives, like the d2 Quadra, Big Disk, Rugged Hard Disk and more. The two organizations are combining to create what they describe as a “cloud storage service.”
Offering online storage to supplement desktop storage is becoming increasingly important in the storage market. Fabrik, the storage peripheral maker behind SimpleTech and G-Tech which was recently acquired by Hitachi GST, provides 2GB of free online backup with its SimpleTech drives; and storage peripheral maker Iomega bundles online storage with some of its products through the Mozy online backup service.The nine staff members of Wuala will remain with the company, where they will join LaCie engineers to add new features and capabilities to LaCie’s storage products going forward.