NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire SolidFire for $870 million in cash. Founded in 2010, SolidFire is an all-flash storage systems vendor delivering systems built for “next-generation” data centers.
With SolidFire, NetApp will now have all-flash offerings that address each of the three largest all-flash array market segments.
- For the traditional enterprise infrastructure buyer, the NetApp All Flash FAS (AFF) product line delivers enterprise-grade features across flash, disk and cloud
- For the application owner, the NetApp EF Series product line would offer SPC-1 benchmarks with consistent low-latency performance and proven 6×9’s reliability.
- For the next-generation infrastructure buyer, SolidFire’s distributed, self-healing, webscale architecture would deliver seamless scalability, white box economics, and simple management. This would enable customers to accelerate third platform use cases and webscale economics.
“This acquisition will benefit current and future customers looking to gain the benefits of webscale cloud providers for their own data centers,” said George Kurian, chief executive officer (CEO) of NetApp. “SolidFire combines the performance and economics of all-flash storage with a web-scale architecture that radically simplifies data center operations and enables rapid deployments of new applications. We look forward to extending NetApp’s flash leadership with the SolidFire team, products and partner ecosystem, and to accelerating flash adoption through NetApp’s large partner and customer base.”
Over time, SolidFire products will be incorporated into NetApp’s data fabric strategy, delivering “seamless” data management across flash, disk and cloud resources. Following the close of the transaction, which is anticipated to occur in NetApp’s fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2016, subject to customary closing conditions, SolidFire CEO, Dave Wright, will lead the SolidFire product line within NetApp’s product operations.
“Both SolidFire and NetApp have deep technical, customer-centric cultures, which are focused on delivering innovations that give customers a competitive advantage,” said Dave Wright, chief executive officer (CEO) at SolidFire. “We look forward to enhancing NetApp’s position within the all-flash array market while helping NetApp and SolidFire customers and partners succeed.”
