IBRIX Falls to HP

Today, HP announced that it was going to buy IBRIX, a small NAS scale-out software technology. HP have partnered with them for some time, so the move was probably a natural one.

A quick analysis; here are my initial thoughts.

• PolyServe (aka Enterprise File Services) is dead. Dead as the Norwegian Blue. It always looked a bit like it was nailed to its perch, but this, if any was needed, is confirmation that doing scale-out well is hard, and that HP picked a loser the first time round.
  
• This lets HP sell more servers; IBRIX is software only, and what better than another acquisition that lets them close out IBM and Dell in favour of HP tin.
  
• Cloud thinking must be in there somewhere. A scale-out NAS is always going to be preferable over a bunch of strung together aging EVAs.
  
• What is confusing is the HP StorageWorks product range. It encompasses everything from DAS to NAS to SAN in multiple flavours; a veritable Tutti Frutti of storage. But then, it's all "designed" to sell servers from what I can see. Either it runs on an HP server, or it needs an HP server to front it off.
  
• Lastly, and I think you'd have to agree on this one; it's an interesting time to be in storage.

Where and what (and who) next? Your guess on this one is as good as mine.

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Comments

[Jim Haberkorn]

Hi Alex,

While you're covering recent competitor acquisitions, you might want to say something about EMC's acquisition of DataDomain as well.

Here's the difference between HP's Ibrix acquisition and NetApp's failure to close the DataDomain deal. When HP bought Ibrix, you speculated on the future impact to one of our products - Polyserve. When NetApp failded to buy DataDomain, the industry analsts were speculating on the future of your entire company.

Best regards,

Jim

[Lee Razo]

Jim,

Your point here seems to be:

"HP is a super-enourmous company which is able to absorb really big mistakes and survive"

On that point I don't think you'll find an argument.

[Jim Haberkorn]

Hi Lee,

For now, your comment is just an hypothesis. We won't really know if it is true unless we but NetApp.

Best regards,

Jim

[Jim Haberkorn]

Hi Lee,

Sorry typo: Here it is again:
----------------

Hi Lee,

For now, your comment is just an hypothesis. We won't really know if it is true unless we buy NetApp.

Best regards,

Jim

[Lee Razo]

Hi Jim,

Now that would be interesting...

Would certainly make for some fascinating blog posts :-)

--Lee

[Jim Haberkorn]

Hi Lee,

Your comment gave me a genuine laugh. Well said. Yes,it would be interesting.

Best regards,

Jim

[Just a Storage Guy]

Jim-

To buy NTAP, that would require HP to know anything about storage. If you guys did, you would have taken the EVA out behind the shed and put it down by now.

I've never seen a storage system that broke storage rule #1(no matter what, protect the data) more than the EVA.