Quoting TechTarget's Search Storage
Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has quietly become the buyer of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s ailing 6920 virtualization product, a technology it picked up with the acquisition of Pirus Technologies for $160 million in 2002, multiple industry sources said.
Though sources said the deal is effectively done, the financial terms were not available. Analysts said the move could mark a smart divestment for Sun and a tightening of the business relationship between the two companies.
"This wouldn't be about HDS acquiring a product that they're going to go out and promote heavily," said Greg Schulz, founder and analyst with the StorageIO Group, adding that he was not privy to the deal. "This would be about the opportunity for HDS to sell more products where the 6920 was being offered and to continue to offer support to existing users of the product."
What existing users there are for the 6920 remains in doubt -- the product never achieved much success in the midrange virtualization market. "It's been very hard to locate 6920 customers," said a source close to the deal. "I think there might have been one I heard of, who was using it as cheap disk, without using the virtualization piece."
Some experts have questioned why HDS would want to purchase a less successful midrange virtualization product when it already has the high-end TagmaStore virtualization offerings.
"If in fact they have bought it, then it would strike me as a preemptive defensive move to maintain control of the intelligent storage controller market," said Brad O'Neill, senior analyst with the Taneja Group.
"One thing I can say about the 6920 is that it has a powerful user interface," said John Webster, principal IT advisor for Illuminata Inc. "That may be something HDS is looking for." Webster said the strength of the interface is the ability to make multiple mirror copies of data, update those mirrors, and make and track snapshots for different types of arrays through one screen.
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