HP Tuesday announced that it will acquire OuterBay, a vendor of software that archives database information.

The acquisition will allow HP to tap into a market that has a 50% compound average growth rate. It also allows HP to bolster its data protection, e-mail archiving and file movement technologies.

HP says that the acquisition of OuterBay will allow them to help organizations effectively manage their database environments and improve performance by as much as 80%. The acquisition will also allow HP to expand its Oracle, SQL Server and Sybase database offerings. As many as 60% of HP's Integrity server customers run Oracle applications today.

In addition, OuterBay’s technology complements HP’s information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy in that it allows customers to more easily manage the retention of information in their databases.

OuterBay's Application Data Management Suite of database and application archiving is available in two editions – an Enterprise Edition for customers with very large databases and a Compliance Edition for customers with regulatory compliance requirements. The Compliance Edition works with EMC's Centera, HP's Reference Information Storage System, IBM's DR 550 and Network Appliance's NearStore.

OuterBay will be integrated into the StorageWorks division of HP's Technology Solutions Group. The database archiving startup has approximately 60 employees in offices in Cupertino, Calif., the U.K. and India. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.