Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has struck a deal to acquire privately held hyper-converged infrastructure provider, SimpliVity, for $US650 million which, at the time of writing was worth almost $AU860 million, in cash.
HPE revealed on January 17 that it had a definitive agreement to acquire SimpliVity, with the transaction expected to close in the second quarter of HPE's fiscal year 2017, subject to regulatory review, approval, and other conditions.
The move comes just over two months after industry rumours emerged that HPE was eyeing the software-defined infrastructure start-up for a consideration thought to be as much as $US3.9 billion, with the final price tag for the company coming in well under some estimates.
For HPE, the deal will bring together its infrastructure, automation, and cloud management software with SimpliVity's software-defined data management platform, while HPE and its partner ecosystem will now be able to deliver a "built-for-enterprise" hyper-converged infrastructure offering.
The companies said their combined product portfolios, in partnership with HPE's go-to-market capability and partner ecosystem, will be able to “significantly” accelerate the financial performance of the united business.
"HPE's broad sales reach, extensive partner channel, complementary technology and commitment to innovation will accelerate SimpliVity's journey and significantly strengthen our ability to deliver the best-in-class hybrid IT solutions our customers are looking for," SimpliVity chairman and CEO, Doron Kempel, said.
Meanwhile, HPE said software-defined infrastructure is “at the heart” of its hybrid IT strategy, and the acquisition is expected to accelerate the company's ability to deliver a modern, multi-cloud, multi-Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform.
"This transaction expands HPE's software-defined capability and fits squarely within our strategy to make hybrid IT simple for customers," HPE president and CEO, Meg Whitman, said. "More and more customers are looking for solutions that bring them secure, highly resilient, on-premises infrastructure at cloud economics. That's exactly where we're focused.”
HPE said for its current customers and partners, it will continue to offer its existing hyper-converged products, the HC 380 and the HC 250. Likewise, for SimpliVity customers and partners, there will be no immediate change in the product roadmap, with HPE continuing to support existing SimpliVity customers and platforms.
However, within 60 days of closing the transaction, HPE intends to offer the SimpliVity Omni Stack software, qualified for its ProLiant DL380 servers.
Additionally, in the second half of 2017, the company plans to offer a range of integrated HPE SimpliVity hyper-converged systems based on HPE ProLiant Servers.
HPE said further down the track, its customers can expect to see new innovations, such as workspace controls for simple self-service portals to compose virtualised and containerised resources, and enhanced business insight, including predictive analytics.
