EMC Acquire XtremIO - Architecting IT

One of the worst kept secrets in the storage world is finally out. EMC are acquiring XtremIO for a reported $430 million, as documented in a previous post.

The EMC press release talks about XtremIO as “one of the world’s widely regarded Flash storage architecture pioneers”, yet they have no revenue or paying customers to reference. Although I speculated that EMC may have been acquiring IP to develop for Project Thunder, perhaps the actual reason was to acquire the talent within the company to help bring Thunder (and new products) to market. Regardless, two things are for sure:

EMC are acknowledging that all-flash arrays are a new market segment
EMC are confirming that all-flash traditional arrays simply can’t cut the mustard

Expect a land grab to acquire other flash array vendors. That will undoubtedly result in a Darwinian cull with many new entrants falling by the wayside. This is when things get interesting, as we see who has the technology genes to survive. Ironically, this morning I caught up with Dan Crain from Whiptail, another flash array vendor that is shipping product -with plenty of customer references. Expect to see a review of this technology in the future. Storage is interesting again.

EMC chugs down flash freshman XtremIO for $430m (The Register)
Xtrem Thunder in the forecast for EMC? (Pure Storage)
EMC Buys ExtremeIO (Ray On Storage)
EMC Buys XtremIO for $430m (Globes)

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