Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced Wednesday that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire LeftHand Networks, a company focused on storage virtualization and iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions.
The Boulder, Colo.-based co. enables midsize co.’s and remote offices or branches of large corporations to cost-effectively protect critical business data. As the largest iSCSI vendor LeftHand Networks provides customers with highly available storage solutions that are ideal for virtualized environments and data center, providing new levels of scalability and utilization. The co.’s innovative storage systems also provide a unique double fault protection across the entire SAN, reducing vulnerabilities without driving up costs the way traditional SANs can.
In addition, for certain virtualized environments, LeftHand Networks’ intelligent cloning technology can reduce the amount of disk space required for storage by up to 97%, while its thin provisioning features reduce power consumption by minimizing the over-provisioning of storage.
According to research firm IDC, the iSCSI / IP SAN market is expected to grow to $4.4 billion by 2012.
HP has agreed to purchase LeftHand Networks for $360 million in cash. The co. has 215 employees and more than 500 resellers and distributors worldwide. LeftHand Networks has more than 11,000 installations across 3,000 different customers.
With the addition of LeftHand Networks, HP will add midrange offerings to its suite of iSCSI solutions.
“The acquisition of LeftHand Networks”, said Dave Roberson, senior vice president and general manager, StorageWorks Division, HP, “significantly expands HP’s storage portfolio, enabling it to deliver customers an expanded suite of storage functionality, scalable capacity and interconnect options for every budget and performance requirement. With our strong channel and leading position in the industry-standard server market”, continued Mr. Roberson, “we are ideally positioned to deliver this technology to customers worldwide.”
The transaction is subject to certain closing conditions and is expected to be completed in HP’s first fiscal quarter of 2009. Following completion, the business will be integrated into the HP StorageWorks division within the Technology Solutions Group at HP.
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