Red
Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source
solutions, today announced that it has acquired the assets and
technology of Permabit Technology Corporation, a provider of software
for data deduplication, compression and thin provisioning. With the
addition of Permabit's data deduplication and compression capabilities
to the world's leading enterprise Linux platform, Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, Red Hat will be able to better enable enterprise digital
transformation through more efficient storage options.
As
more enterprises move towards adopting the efficiencies offered by
digital technologies like Linux containers and cloud computing, being
able to run these services and store the resulting data requires new
storage needs outside of what is offered by traditional storage
technologies. Storage efficiency is a key piece in addressing these
needs, particularly with the emergence of hyperconverged infrastructure
(HCI) which blends storage and compute onto a single x86 server.
Enterprise-class, open source solutions can help to address the storage
challenges posed by these digitally transformative technologies by using
software to increase the amount of storage available to applications
without increasing the amount of physical storage.
With
Permabit's technology, Red Hat can now bring powerful data
deduplication and compression features into Red Hat Enterprise Linux
itself, which will also enhance capabilities across Red Hat's hybrid
cloud and storage technologies, including Red Hat OpenStack Platform,
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat Storage. Consistent
with its commitment to delivering fully open source solutions and
upstream-first innovation, Red Hat plans to open source Permabit's
technology. This will enable customers to use a single, supported and
fully-open platform to drive storage efficiency, without having to rely
on heterogeneous tools or customized and poorly-supported operating
systems.
The
transaction is expected to have no material impact to Red Hat's
guidance for its second fiscal quarter ending Aug. 31, 2017, or fiscal
year ending Feb. 28, 2018.
"Digitally-transformative
technologies, including cloud infrastructure, Linux containers and
hyper-converged infrastructure, require enterprises to re-examine
overlooked or previously commoditized technology decisions, especially
storage, to gain as many efficiencies as possible for business
evolution. With the addition of Permabit's data deduplication and
compression tools to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat will be ready to
support these organizations as they seek to derive a more efficient
storage footprint to power business innovation." -- Jim Totton, vice president and general manager, Red Hat