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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