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Which flash array vendor will be bought & by who?
This topic was created by Chris Mellor 1.
Which flash array vendor will be bought & by who?
Which all-flash array vendor will be bought next and by who?
There are six potential buyers at first glance:-
- Cisco
- Dell
- HDS
- HP
- IBM
- NetApp
- and maybe (outside bet) Symantec.
There are ten buying targets at first glance:
- GreenBytes
- Kaminario
- Nimbus
- Pure Storage
- Solidfire
- Tintri
- TMS (looking for a partner/buyer already)
- Violin Memory (think looking for low billions price)
- Virident
- Whiptail
So who will buy who now that EMC is buying Xtremio and so out of the picture?
I'd think NetApp buying Pure Storage would be a goodish fit.
What do you think?
Forgot NexGen
Eleven targets - I forgot Nexgen who make shared flash arrays using Fusion-io flash cards.
Re: Forgot NexGen
And Avere possibly - it's becoming storage in its own right and not just a NAS accelerator. That's a round dozen.
Senior Analyst
Great list, Chris. Agree that Avere should be on the list.
Some fits
I sincerely hope PureStorage gets another year or two. They really are on a good roll to get where they need to be but their market fit is still too niche. And please, no NetApp for them :-)
What fits for me?
Kaminario/DELL: Kaminario builds their solutions now on DELL hardware but the biggest reason is that they own IP without proprietary hardware. This fits perfectly in the Fluid story DELL brings.
NimbusData/HP: Scaleout/ScaleUp high performance on low pricepoint. Bigger market. Fits more in strategy acquisitions like 3PAR. Ready for market, handle integration later.
Maybe SolidFire is a better match for NetApp? one-size-fits-all, easy scaleout.
Others: FusionIO missed the acquisition boat I think. They should have been acquired by HP last year and integraded in Gen8 servers. This would have changed the server/storage market. By now they are too much integraded through other server vendors and will be to expensive. Violin could still be an alternative ...
In July I'll do an update on my Vendor Acquisitions & Partnerships post :-) http://hansdeleenheer.blogspot.com/2011/07/vendor-acquisitions-partnerships-v2.html
Musical flash array chairs
Okay, here is my list of with flash array vendor could be bought by which storage array/server system vendor. It is not predicated on any inside knowledge, being merely gut feel and guesswork:-
Kaminario goes to Dell
TMS goes to HDS
Tintri goes to HP
Greenbytes goes to NetApp
Pure Storage goes to Cisco
SolidFire goes to IBM
Then other entrants come to the party and:-
Whiptail goes to Nexsan
Virident goes to Fujitsu
Avere goes to F5
Fusion-io, Nimbus and Violin Memory stay independent.
That's my guesstimate .... for now.
Re: Wow 100% Flash success??
I can't predict a flag array vendor's gonna fail ... how could I ever talk to them again? They'll hate me!
Chris
Right on target as usual...
Totally agree.. the flash appliance / array space will certainly be interesting next couple years.
