Permabit, the company that produces the record-breaking Albireo OEM embedded deduplication software, announced it has been awarded with four new patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office. That adds up to a total of eight new patents this year – we covered the first four back in June – and 27 since the company was founded.

The latest patents all cover different forms of data protection. US Patent Nos. 7,979,397, 7,979,771, and 7,987,197 focus on “protection and retention of information,” while No. 8,055,628 covers an erasure coding technology the company has developed.

In addition to highlighting its innovations, Permabit took the opportunity of this late-year announcement to look into what the company has accomplished this year.

“We really hit the ground running in 2011, with a number of product enhancements, speaking sessions, and awards and accolades,” said Tom Cook, CEO of Permabit. “We’re looking forward to the year ahead where we plan on shipping Albireo with several OEM partners.”

The most notable updates in this category include a study by the Enterprise Strategy Group Lab that measured Albireo’s dedupe speed.    The research group found that the software’s latest release at the time featured a 250 percent improvement to performance, or 400GB/sec, compared to what was available to customers the year before.

In September the company also released an API for its software. Developers can use it to expand Albireo beyond its native support roster, introducing the offering to a bigger number of customers than before.

In 2011, Permabit went through several executives-level changes.  And most recently, the company promoted Michael Fortso to the position of VP of Engineering.  He’s been working for the company for a while and previously served as Director of Engineering and Chief Architect.  He was employed at Enteprise Archive before joining Permabit.