Storage software vendors – two down, many more to go

(By Philip Carnelley, 20 Jul 2009, 21.50) EMC today announced that it has acquired majority ownership of Data Domain, bringing to a close the struggle with NetApp (see The Price of Storage – a Software Love Triangle). Other news out there in storage-software land is that HP has bought a small specialist vendor, IBRIX, to assist in providing cloud storage services. IBRIX’s file-serving software is aimed at companies storing large amounts of data – up to “tens of petabytes.” HP was already using the technology in a number of its offerings.

Storage will continue to be a key battleground between enterprise systems companies as their customers struggle with the burgeoning quantities of data being generated by their operations. Small software companies with clever technology in the storage sector can look forward to growing interest from the big boys – including NetApp, which will need to do something to overcome the loss of DDI. They may expect a good price: EMC finally paid around $2.4bn for DDI, a company with annual revenues of $270m.