Microsoft Enters Agreement to Purchase Avere Systems

Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it had entered into an agreement to purchase Avere Systems, a maker of software and hardware appliances that can perform filesystem virtualization, file-to-object gateway services, and allow customers to easily connect their onsite storage to public cloud storage.

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you’ll know that I’ve been a big fan of the Avere platform. In my reseller days, I was involved in a few deals on solutions and designs involving Avere filers.

If you’re not familiar with Avere, you can read these quick overviews of their cloud gateway capabilities, their virtual filer, and their complete onsite storage solution.

Avere Systems customers include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, John Hopkins University, and Sony Corporation’s entertainment division. (I’m fairly familiar with how two of those three customers are employing their Avere filers.)

If I were to sum up what the Avere filers provide for customers, it would be that they provide the performance of local (onsite) storage for data that’s stored remotely (offsite). Clients access the Avere systems front-end using either the NFS or SMB protocols. The back-end can connect to multiple storage sources using either NFS, SMB, S3, or some combination. The Avere filers present clients with a single global namespace, meaning the client has no knowledge of where the data’s source actually is. Data can be migrated between sources on the Avere’s back-end with no interruption of service to clients connecting to the front-end.

With the virtual filers, Avere can also allow offsite compute clients in the cloud to access data in a customer’s private onsite data center…

In all, it’s not difficult to see why Microsoft might want to acquire them — especially since they’ve announced their intent to move it into their Azure division. What’s surprising, really, is that no other cloud provider saw Avere as an acquisition target earlier.

If Microsoft is able to incorporate that ability to have cloud computing resources accessing data from private onsite data centers into Azure, it will be a big differentiator for them as no other cloud providers currently offer a similar capability.

At this time, there’s been no news regarding the purchase price. Estimates and specualtion range from $300 Million to $500 Million. If true, compared to the potential Avere’s intellectual property has to add to a cloud service provider, this could turn out to have been quite the bargain for Microsoft.

Today, Avere Systems supports Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. Obviously we should expect closer integration with Azure in the future, but Microsoft says they’ll continue to support AWS and Google, which I’m sure is welcome news to existing Avere Customers.

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Cisco Announces Intention to Acquire Springpath

SpringPathOn Monday, Cisco ended over a year of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) speculation and announced their intent to acquire Springpath.

In this case, instead of Cisco the networking company, we’re looking at Cisco the manufacturer of the Unified Computing System (UCS) compute platform. Springpath makes hyperconvergence software. Cisco has been running that software — rebranded as the Cisco HX Data Platform — on their UCS servers and offering that bundle as their HyperFlex HCI solution. You may remember that I wrote about HyperFlex when it first launched back in March of 2016.

I’ve been a fan of the UCS platform since its launch, and I’ve been a fan of Springpath since they came out of stealth.  HyperFlex has always looked like a great HCI solution to me, and I’ve been surprised it hasn’t taken off more than it has.

Cisco’s been making an overall change to put more emphasis on software and its value-add, and the Springpath acquisition obviously fits well with that shift. The Springpath team will be joining Cisco’s Computing Systems Product Group.

At the price — $320Million in cash — it’s a bargain for Cisco even if they’re only acquiring Springpath to ensure exclusive access to the intellectual property, or ongoing support for HyperFlex. The acquisition is expected to close in Q1 of 2018, pending regulatory review.

Cisco Press Release

HPE Acquiring SimpliVity for a Bargain Basement Price

Yesterday, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced that they had entered into an agreement to acquire hyperconverged infrastructure vendor SimpliVity for $650 Million in cash. This number comes in significantly lower than the rumors that had been going around, valuing SimpliVity as an acquisition target at as high as $3.9 Billion.

Long-time readers already know I’m a long-time fan of SimpliVity (in fact, they’re one place I had contacted as part of my current job search). I’d been rooting for them to make it to the IPO stage. Continue reading

NetApp to Acquire SolidFire for $870 Million – GeekFluent’s Thoughts

SolidFire logoYesterday, NetApp announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire SolidFire for $870 Million in an all-cash bid.

SolidFire is a privately-held storage company who makes an All-Flash array based on a scale-out architecture. I’m a big fan of both SolidFire and their Element X operating system (available as a software-only option) — I’ve written about them before.

Below I’ll walk through some aspects of the deal and offer my opinions and speculations. I promise they’ll be worth at least as much as you’re paying for them. You can read SolidFire’s official take on it here. My take is completely unofficial. Continue reading

Dell to Acquire EMC for $67 Billion – GeekFluent’s Thoughts

Today, Dell, Inc. announced that they — along with private-equity firms Silver Lake, MSD Partners, and Temasek — have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire EMC Corporation for $33.15 a share. This price comes out to approximately $67Billion in cash and stock, making it the single largest pure-tech takeover ever.

Continue reading

IBM to Acquire Object Storage Vendor Cleversafe

Yesterday, IBM announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Cleversafe. Cleversafe is a manufacturer of object-based storage appliances. Cleversafe positions themselves as a software-based storage solution, but I’ve only ever seen their software available on the hardware appliances they sell.

I’ve been impressed with the ease-of-use and robustness of the Cleversafe platform. I have a few customers using it and they’re very happy with it.

IBM intends to move Cleversafe into their Cloud business unit to assist with on-premises and hybrid cloud solutions. As of this date, no information has been made public on the price of the acquisition.

You can get more details by reading the IBM press release, which is a good read despite their use of “on-premise” instead of the correct “on-premises”…