$970 million deal for mid-range storage
Dell announced on Monday that it will acquire Compellent for $960 million or $27.75 per share. The deal, which was uncontested much like HP’s and Dell’s battle for 3PAR, is a great fit for Dell, who need an entry into mid-range Fibre Channel SAN storage.
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Dell has already placed a stake in iSCSI storage with its acquisition of EqualLogic. And it recently added Exanet for scale-out NAS. The company needed however a Fibre Channel play for customers running Oracle, Exchange and SQL databases.
Compellent is also a good fit for Dell for bolstering its storage software portfolio. The company’s thin provisioning, data tiering and live volume migration capability will be a boon to Dell. Add to that Compellent’s support for SAS, Fibre Channel, iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet and its support of both 2.5 and 3.5-inch drives and you have a very attractive play.
Further, Compellent’s recent release of Storage Center 5.4 introduces new controllers that allow customers to incrementally adopt new technology without incurring new license fees. The controllers provide 6GB of cache space, using non-volatile RAM (NVRAM), a technology that provides data security during power failure without the need for batteries. Six PCIe slots provide scale and choice of interfaces. Online hot code updates keep the system operational during upgrades when controllers are paired. Coupled with Live Volume, migrations become painless.
According to IDC’s third quarter 2010 external storage system report, Dell is in fifth place behind EMC, IBM, NetApp and HP with a 9.1% market share. This deal is expected to bolster that.
Dell has committed to keeping Compellent in Eden Prairie, Minn.
