Already the owner of the Verbatim brand, Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., Ltd. (MKM) now acquires Freecom BV.

Founded in 1989, Freecom designs, makes and markets desktop and mobile storage solutions, NAS devices, media players, internet radios, flash drives, DVD burners and pro tape drives.

The stock-funded acquisition includes all of Freecom’s physical assets, patents, trademarks, technology, engineering, sales and marketing expertise. The purchase price was not disclosed.

The new owners say, "The Freecom acquisition represents yet another investment made by the MKM/Verbatim group aimed at the growing external hard disk drive (HDD) market. The asset acquisition of SmartDisk, made in June 2007, has proved successful in establishing MKM/Verbatim in both the portable and desktop external HDD markets on a global basis. By leveraging the strength of the Verbatim brand and channel relationships in the worldwide removable storage markets, the MKM/Verbatim external HDD business has grown more than 600 percent during the past two years."

Mobility Software is a Goose

Maybe you saw this Goose wandering around Planet Reseller at CeBIT? The wandering Goose was from the Hikanoos stand. They sell software and a drive under this bird brand.

The point of the wandering goose at CeBIT was to emphasize Goose lets you work safely anywhere, anytime on any computer. Goose enables mobility with security “as airtight as a goose”.

The Goose software turns any USB key into a secure and mobile portable computer device. You get a complete suite of software with email, browsing, writing, multimedia, chat and call and security.

By security, we mean no-trace technology, no-script protection, anti-virus protection, digital shredder, password memory and more.

The advantage is as clear and pointed as the beak on a goose’s face: instead of lugging a laptop or netbook around, you can carry your USB key—plug it into any chosen computer and the high level of security means when you leave, you leave nothing behind on that chosen computer.

Maybe you prefer a portable computer device, so Goose has loaded their software on a drive. The drive is small enough to be carried on a keychain, yet carries the full Goose software suite. It secures your email communication, phone calls, web visits, and financial transactions.

Retailers and distributors can see Goose highlighted at the upcoming RETAILVISION EUROPE in Berlin.

Hikanoos calls Goose “your digital guardian”. That’s just another way to say: This Goose protects the flock.

Go Goose

What does it take these days to break in the external storage market?

On one hand in external drives, you have the large traditional suppliers who have brand as their biggest asset. On the other hand, you have companies entering the market based on design because storage is now a business of fashion. And thirdly, you have other companies who enter the market based on including an extra feature, typically added security benefits.

Rocstor, based near Los Angeles, has cracked the US market by combining both design and security. Rocsecure (division of Rocstor) is an industry leader in Secure Encrypted digital data content storage. Between their Rocbit and Rocsafe product lines, Rocsecure is able to offer secure Real-Time hardware data encryption AES 256‐Bit and up to 192‐Bit Triple DES encryption with multiple interfaces and cross‐platform compatibility in both external and notebook‐centered solutions.

Rocstor made their first foray into CeBIT this year, showing 10 new product lines and announcing another ten will come before June 2009. Rocstor makes desktop and rack-mounted RAID storage, but we looked at their pocket drives at CeBIT. Drives like their new AIRHAWK H series. As with their other Rocstor products, these drives are both bus‐powered and bootable, says Anthony Rink, VP of Sales (shown in photo at his CeBIT stand).

The new AIRHAWK Pocket Drives contain a fast, high capacity 2.5” SATA drive mechanism, with up to 800 MB/sec transfer speeds and multiple interfaces in a very stylish case (but one designed for thermal efficiency and silent operation). The bootable feature allows the user to boot, access and operate all programs and data via any another computer under the same OS environments with this hard drive.

After 20 years sell hard drive technologies, LaCie of France wants to be a first mover to the cloud: they bought Caleido AG (Swiss online storage solution called Wuala but pronounced like the French “Voila”).

Go LaCie