DataDirect Networks (DDN), the global leader in AI and Multi-Cloud Data Management, today announced its intent to acquire Nexenta, the market leader in Software Defined Storage (SDS) for 5G and Internet of Things (IoT), creating the Nexenta by DDN division.

The acquisition adds powerful enterprise-class scale-up and scale-out software capabilities for hardware-, protocol-, stack/platform-, cloud- and app-agnostic deployments to DDN's product portfolio. It brings 3,000 enterprise, telco and service provider (SP) customers, 300 go to market partners, 50 patents and nearly 2,000 petabytes of storage capacity to DDN's already significant customer, partner and IP ecosystem. 

"Nexenta helped create the Software Defined Storage market and achieved a leadership position in it by deploying more than $100 Million of software globally," said Alex Bouzari, CEO and co-founder of DDN. "With the addition of Nexenta's great team, IP, and its visionary CEO Tarkan Maner, DDN is broadening our markets beyond AI, Big Data, virtualization and Multi-Cloud, and accelerating our investments in next generation 5G, IoT and enterprise software. No one else can bring such a degree of data management freedom, value and flexibility to the marketplace."

DDN is combining three technology powerhouses, DDN Storage, Tintri by DDN and now Nexenta by DDN, for the benefit of its customers' AI and Multi-Cloud Data Management needs: 

• DDN Storage delivers the world's most powerful and comprehensive AI,bigdata anddatamanagement at scale product portfolio
• Tintri by DDN offers the ultimate in simplicity and control forvirtualizedenvironments and enterpriseapplications
• Nexenta by DDN provides the most cost and performance-optimalsoftware-defined data services forenterprises, telcos and SPs with 5Gand IoT requirements
  

"Nexenta's customers, partners, investors and our entire team are very excited about joining the fast-growing DDN family, and accelerating the massive market disruption which is helping customers digitally transform their legacy IT infrastructures thanks to our innovative and award-winning 5G and IoT-driven software," said Tarkan Maner, CEO of Nexenta. "As part of DDN we will scale financially, operationally, and geographically, giving our customers and partners the freedom and agility to operate and innovate efficiently, as they build and expand their AI and Multi-Cloud capabilities."

With 3,000 customers and $100 Million of software deployed globally, Nexenta is already the world's largest app-agnostic pure play SDS vendor. DDN's increased investment will broaden the company's product and technology portfolio, better addressing AI, multi cloud and next generation communications network requirements for telcos and SPs. Nexenta customers and partners will benefit from DDN's larger global customer, partner and service ecosystem and IP footprint, along with its fast growing and solid operational and financial performance. 

"DDN has a long track record of creating advanced storage infrastructures for challenging use cases in a number of demanding markets including AI, HPC, media and entertainment and life sciences," said Henry Baltazar, research VP of 451 Research. "The acquisition of SDS pioneer Nexenta extends DDN's storage product portfolio into mainstream midrange and enterprise use cases while also opening up new market opportunities in emerging markets such as 5G and IoT."

Nexenta by DDN will continue to offer SDS solutions through its distribution and reseller partners with all existing platforms and components. Nexenta partners will receive more news over the coming months about new solutions as the DDN roadmap broadens.

"We are excited about the DDN acquisition of Nexenta," said Chris Orlando, CEO and Co-Founder of ScaleMatrix, whose national footprint of high-density data centers and cloud hosting platforms are specifically designed to support transformative high-performance computing requirements. "Our clients benefit from the flexibility and performance of Nexenta's robust SDS solutions and platform-agnostic strategy, which provide great differentiation for the HPC, AI, and high-performance data analytics (HPDA) verticals we serve. With escalating demands from our clients for ultra-scalable compute and data storage platforms, we look forward to the exciting developments which will result from this new relationship."

As the leading provider of AI and Data Management software and hardware solutions, spanning edge to core for intensive workloads such as AI, Big Data and IoT, DDN is enabling organizations to successfully accelerate the digital transformation of their business in a platform- and vendor-agnostic way, and with full support for private and multiple public cloud deployment models. The Nexenta acquisition broadens and enhances the value DDN brings to its customers, partners and to the marketplace.