Meant to blog about this the other day. Avid announced that they purchased Medea. This, combined with Avid’s purchase of Pinnacle Systems a year ago, makes me very curious about what Avid’s longterm growth plan.

The first point that interested me is that the press release that apparently describes the purchase just talks about some new products that Avid/Medea will be selling. Avid doesn’t have any documents that mention that they actually purchased the company (as best as I can tell). Medea links to the press release with the link “Avid Acquires Medea.”

So, first off, it seems odd that Avid forgot to mention that they bought the company.

Next, Avid already had a pretty robust line of storage products. I’m not sure what exactly Medea adds to their capabilities – the Medea VideoRaid product isn’t a direct competitor to the Apple xRaid – it’s sort of in the next tier up, utilizing scsi discs at the expense of… well, expense.

Similarly, I haven’t seen much in the way of integration between Pinnacle Systems and Avid.

So, is Avid pulling a Google/Yahoo, buying up companies so that other people can’t have them? I’m starting to wonder. It is starkly different from the Apple approach, wherein a company that is purchased essentially ceases to have ever existed. Just… odd…