As rumored for the past month, IBM last week finally acquired Diligent Technologies, a startup with de-duplication technology.

IBM will add Diligent’s technologies and employees to its IBM System Storage business unit, headed by Andy Monshaw. Diligent has headquarters in Framingham, Mass., and R&D facilities in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Although IBM did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition, two Israeli media outlets – Haaretz and Globes – estimated it to be between $165 million and $200 million.

Diligent’s ProtecTIER data protection software is an in-line system that reduces the amount of storage in data centers by eliminating redundant data. The company also markets virtual tape library software for open systems and mainframes.

According to a study by TheInfoPro of 152 Fortune 1000 enterprise-sized businesses, 56% of the respondents said they spent more on data de-duplication in 2007 than they did in 2006.

IBM has been busy with storage acquisitions in the last few months. The company acquired Israeli-based XIV in January to add to its cloud computing portfolio, and FilesX, a maker of continuous data protection software, earlier this month. IBM will add these acquisitions to its storage business along with it acquisitions of Arsenal Digital Solutions for online backup and archiving, NovusCG for professional services and Softek for storage resource management and data migration. (Compare Storage products)

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