IBM announced that it is on its way to acquiring Cleversafe, a privately held Chicago-based company that develops and manufactures object-based storage and appliances.
In a press release, IBM details that it already entered a definitive agreement for the acquisition of Cleversafe. The New York-based company believes that the Cleversafe buyout will strengthen its position not only in hybrid cloud and storage, but in social, analytics and mobile applications as well. No figures for the set acquisition were disclosed.
"Once the deal closes, IBM will integrate the Cleversafe portfolio into its IBM Cloud business unit to give clients strategic data flexibility, simplified management and consistency with on-premise, cloud and hybrid cloud deployment options," IBM reveals.
IBM argues that as more and more companies move on to digitally transforming their business, challenges such as finding the best common ground between on-premises data management and cloud storage solutions and the swift growth of unstructured data will be prevalent.
It aims to resolve these challenges with the acquisition of Cleversafe, along with the company's object storage technology, which will allow tons of data to be stored more efficiently without compromising data-intensive tasks done on the cloud. This is in reference to estimates from the International Data Corporation, which predicts that 80 percent of new cloud applications will be big-data intensive.
"Cleversafe, a pioneer in object storage, will add to our efforts to help clients overcome these challenges by extending and strengthening our cloud storage strategy, as well as our portfolio," adds Robert LeBlanc, senior vice president for IBM Cloud.
Aside from its object-based and on-premises solutions that host massive file repositories on exabytes of storage, Cleversafe has over 350 patents to its name. Furthermore, Cleversafe also developed dsNet (Dispersed Storage Network), which enhances its offerings for on-premises storage.
IBM notes that dsNet compliments what it has already implemented. Therefore, the 104-year-old company will integrate Cleversafe's dsNet technologies and solutions into its own cloud solutions and services, which will provide clients with a hybrid cloud deployment model.
"Following close of the deal, clients will be able to use SoftLayer cloud services and IBM Bluemix, IBM's Platform-as-a-Service, to create dynamic and innovative applications with the Cleversafe technology as a foundational content repository and data archive," explains IBM.
The acquisition is rumored to be finalized before the end of 2015.
Photo: Patrick Heinecke | Flickr
