Cofio Software
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Data management software |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Headquarters | San Diego , United States |
| Products | AIMstor, ViStor |
Cofio Software, a privately owned company located in San Diego, California, was established in 2006 and specialized in developing the data management solution AIMstor. After being acquired by Hitachi Data Systems in 2012, AIMstor was renamed Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID), and subsequently rebranded as Hitachi Ops Center Protector, thereby strengthening Hitachi's suite of data protection offerings.
History
The founding members and principal engineering staff of Cofio originated from BakBone Software, where they contributed to the redevelopment of the NetVault Backup version 6 product. This team, operating out of Southern England, had collaborated since the early 1990s. The term Cofio is derived from Welsh, meaning "to remember."
Focusing on software for data management and storage, Cofio secured the trademark for AIMstor in 2008. After its acquisition by Hitachi Data Systems on September 21, 2012, AIMstor was transformed into Hitachi Data Instance Director (HDID). HDID combines data protection capabilities across HDS storage systems and offers workflow and policy management to deliver integrated data management solutions.
AIMstor
AIMstor served as Cofio Software’s flagship product, created to consolidate multiple data management functionalities—including backup, archiving, real-time replication, complete recovery, and continuous data protection (True-CDP)—within a unified platform. Rather than assembling various independent products, AIMstor functioned as a workflow orchestrator for diverse data protection and management activities.
At the heart of AIMstor was a graphical user interface that allowed administrators to visually configure data policies and workflows, thereby streamlining the handling of complex network topologies and policy enforcement.
A notable component was the Repository, a storage system designed to capture live data for backup, continuous protection, and archiving purposes. It incorporated data deduplication alongside an indexing engine to enable rapid content retrieval.
Although marketed under distinct names such as AIMstor Backup, AIMstor Replication, and AIMstor CDP, these were all integral modules of the singular AIMstor platform. The software was compatible with Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems.
ViStor
ViStor was a software-driven virtual tape library (VTL) introduced in 2007 mainly targeting Asian OEMs developing VTL appliances. Operating on Linux, it supported iSCSI protocols as well as Emulex Fibre Channel host bus adapters. ViStor was discontinued following Cofio’s acquisition by Hitachi Data Systems.