NetApp now joins the ranks of companies adding "big data" storage capabilities to its product line.
SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Just
as there is a trend toward convergence of functionality in data center systems
these days, there is an equal amount of convergence among entire companies in
the data-storage sector.
NetApp on March 9 joined the ranks of companies adding "big data" storage
capabilities when it announced the acquisition of LSI Corp.'s Engenio storage
systems business in a $480 million, all-cash transaction.
The deal follows by two days Western Digital's
$4.3
billion acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. Other recent
storage-related deals include
Dell's
$980 million annexation of Compellent in December,
Hewlett-Packard's
$2.3 billion buy of 3PAR last August and
EMC's
$2.5 billion pickup of Isilon last November.
All of those acquired companies produce large-scale, cluster-type storage
systems that can handle petabyte-level workloads and server-attached and
embedded storage. Engenio, based in Milpitas, Calif., fills this void for
NetApp.
"This move opens up a whole new set of workloads for us," NetApp CEO
Tom Georgens, who served as LSI president and CEO several years ago, told
analysts and media members on a conference call.
"LSI brings a whole new market that we couldn't have moved into otherwise.
This is a strategic storage platform that will allow us to capitalize on new,
high-growth opportunities that we don't currently reach with our FAS
[fabric-attached storage] platform."
Georgens said he expects the Engenio acquisition to bring NetApp about $5
billion in total available market "over the next few years," specifically by
2014.
New Doors Will Open for NetApp
Engenio will indeed open new market doors for NetApp. The LSI division has
built up about 300,000 installations globally.
The Engenio systems are aimed at fast-growing market segments that are topped
by video, which includes full-motion video capture, high-definition, 3D and
simple digital video surveillance. Another growing market NetApp will now reach
is high-performance computing, such as genomics sequencing and scientific
research.
NetApp's channel and customers that will-or soon will-require high-performance
and big-bandwidth capabilities now will have a viable option with Engenio's
storage platform.
Although Georgens said that NetApp and LSI didn't have a particularly tight
relationship outside of its supplier-buyer OEM deal, the NetApp chief executive
certainly knows all about the Engenio product line.
Georgens spent nine years at Engenio, including the last two years as CEO,
before moving to NetApp in 2005. Georgens also served in various other
positions at LSI, including president of storage systems and executive vice
president of LSI Logic Storage Systems.
The deal is expected to close in approximately 60 days, NetApp said.
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Chris Preimesberger was named Editor-in-Chief of Features & Analysis at eWEEK in November 2011. Previously he served eWEEK as Senior Writer, covering a range of IT sectors that include data center systems, cloud computing, storage, virtualization, green IT, e-discovery and IT governance. His blog, Storage Station, is considered a go-to information source. Chris won a national Folio Award for magazine writing in November 2011 for a cover story on Salesforce.com and CEO-founder Marc Benioff, and he has served as a judge for the SIIA Codie Awards since 2005. In previous IT journalism, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. His diverse resume also includes: sportswriter for the Los Angeles Daily News, covering NCAA and NBA basketball, television critic for the Palo Alto Times Tribune, and Sports Information Director at Stanford University. He has served as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering Stanford and NCAA tournament basketball, since 1983. He has covered a number of major events, including the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a Presidential press conference at the White House in 1993, the Emmy Awards (three times), two Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl, several NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, a Formula One Grand Prix auto race, a heavyweight boxing championship bout (Ali vs. Spinks, 1978), and the 1985 Super Bowl. A 1975 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Chris has won more than a dozen regional and national awards for his work. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and reside in Redwood City, Calif.Follow on Twitter: editingwhiz
