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”…

CloudSlam 2011 Multi-vendor Panel on the Future of Storage for the Cloud

I had the opportunity last week to sit in on a CloudSlam multi-vendor panel session on the future of storage in the cloud. It was a very interesting and revealing discussion. I’ll do my best to summarize it here and share my thoughts and conclusions.

What is CloudSlam?

CloudSlam is a virtual conference, an online gathering of Cloud computing professionals.  Now in its third year, CloudSlam 2011 had thousands of attendees from over 80 countries.

The Topic

The session was titled “EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp: where they are taking the Cloud”.  It was intended as a discussion of where the vendors see the future of data storage for the cloud. To quote the session description: Continue reading