EMC Corporation today announced that it would acquire Isilon Systems, Inc. a network attached storage systems company, based in Seattle, Washington.
Under terms of the agreement, EMC will pay approximately $2.25 billion in cash, based on a $33.85 per share purchase price for each share of Isilon.
Isilon’s “scale-out NAS” systems are designed to begin small and scale quickly and non-disruptively up to 10 petabytes in size, with extremely high levels of performance and availability. Isilon is known as the leader and momentum player in the fast-growing Scale-out NAS segment, which IDC projects will grow on average approximately 36% annually reaching an estimated $6 billion dollars in 2014.
Joe Tucci, Chairman and CEO, EMC Corporation, said, “The unmistakable waves of cloud computing and ‘Big Data’ are upon us. Customers are looking for new ways to store, protect, secure and add intelligence to the vast amounts of information they will accumulate over the next decade. EMC, in combination with Isilon, sits at the intersection of these trends with leading products, solutions and services to help customers get the absolute most out of what cloud computing has to offer.”
Pat Gelsinger, President and COO, EMC Information Infrastructure Products, said, “EMC brings unique value to Isilon through our highly complementary portfolio, engineering depth, financial strength and global sales reach. Isilon will enable EMC to accelerate our storage revenue growth and serve our customers across a broader range of the storage systems market. EMC will invest in all aspects of Isilon’s business to accelerate growth and take advantage of the fast-growing market opportunity ahead.”
The boards of directors of both EMC and Isilon have unanimously approved the terms of the agreement. The transaction, which is subject to customary approvals, is expected to be completed late this year
In another recent data storage acquisition, HP paid $2.4 billion after a heated bidding war with Dell for storage company 3Par.