Buying into file virtualization

Last week I wrote about the new version of F5 Networks’ WebAccelerator software, which can accelerate Web application traffic between two Big-IP devices.

Shortly after unveiling that product upgrade, F5 is making headlines again. This time it’s for an acquisition. The target is Acopia Networks, which makes file virtualization products. Acopia’s ARX Series appliances can virtualize files stored on network-attached storage devices and file servers, allowing IT administrators to define and automatically enforce data-management policies in the network.

F5 is putting up $210 million to acquire Acopia in a cash deal expected to close next month. The purchase will extend F5’s portfolio of performance and security technologies beyond servers and applications and into the data storage realm, the company says. “This acquisition is highly complementary to F5’s strategy of optimizing the application infrastructure from the core of the data center to the edge of the network,” said John McAdam, F5’s president and CEO of F5 Networks, in a statement.

By absorbing Acopia, F5 will be able to aim its wares at a wider portion of enterprise IT budgets, plus target IT buyers with dual responsibility for applications and associated file storage.

“IT executives are increasing their deployments of file-based storage by 50% to more than 200% a year as they consolidate existing data centers and roll out new fixed content applications,” said Richard Villars, vice president of storage systems research at IDC, in a statement. “These companies need solutions like intelligent file virtualization to improve the efficiency and reduce the costs associated with creating, organizing, protecting, and retaining exploding volumes of business critical, file-based information.”

Gartner analysts Joe Skorupa and Robert Passmore had this to say about the impending union: “Increasingly, application delivery controllers (such as F5's Big-IP products) are being used by teams that manage servers and applications — who are also the users of file storage virtualization.” If F5 can successfully integrate the two product sets, and market and sell a unified range of products, customers looking to simply server consolidation projects will benefit from the data migration capabilities in Acopia's ARX, combined with F5’s WAN optimization products, wrote the two research vice presidents in a recent Gartner brief.