The popular family network MyHeritage is acquiring storage and backup service BackupMyTree LLC, a free and automatic backup service for family tree data.  The buy marks MyHeritage’s sixth acquisition, further expanding its technology and the types of services to be applied to its relatively niche but appealing market.

Just a year after its launch, BackupMyTree has successfully established a new era of research for genealogists and family history buffs with its backup service that protects more than nine terabytes of family trees.  MyHeritage.com will continue to offer its service for free.

 “We believe that BackupMyTree’s cutting edge client-to-cloud technology has massive potential and share its mission of preserving family history, making this a natural and synergistic move for us. We look forward to continuing to provide an excellent free backup service and exploring ways for BackupMyTree to benefit existing MyHeritage.com users and vice versa,” says a MyHeritage representative.

Looking for family tree files automatically and creating a remote control for security applications, BackupMyTree ensures complete protection of data on family trees, preventing the loss of years of work that may occur due to computer disasters such as a virus or hard drive failure. BackupMyTree is compatible with most genealogical applications, provides instant access anywhere and you can download the family tree information in different versions.

The company has claimed its territory in an area of the cloud that many social beings hold dear, promising a sense of longevity that brings more storage and backup offerings to the consumer level.  Considering the deals MyHeritage has made to bulk up its core technology and services, it’s a natural progression to rope in a storage and backup service as it grows its user base, and many industries find value in adding storage as a service or perk.

It’s something we’re seeing at the enterprise level, as storage becomes critical to managing the mounding data that comes from a company at the internal and external level.  As cloud services continue to branch into a maturing ecosystem, more companies find that reselling storage is a necessary aspect of their core product.

Appcelerator even incorporates storage extensions to its developer community through partnerships with companies like Box and Dropbox, adding a great deal of value to their recently launched marketplace for mobile app developers and publishers.  Even in the indirect sense, cloud storage has become a necessary add-on for consumers and businesses alike.