Red Hat will Storage-Spezialistin Gluster übernehmen

Open-Source-Storage-Lösungen für die Verwaltung unstrukturierter Daten

(12.10.11) - Red Hat plant, die Storage-Spezialistin Gluster zu übernehmen. Gluster ist Anbieterin von Open-Source-Storage-Lösungen für die Verwaltung unstrukturierter Daten. Mit der Technologie von Gluster wird Red Hat Unternehmen völlig neue Möglichkeiten bei der Verwaltung von "Big Data" bieten - unabhängig davon, ob die riesigen Mengen unstrukturierter Daten vor Ort oder teilweise auch in einer privaten Cloud gespeichert werden.

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Ushers in New Era of Software-Based Open Storage Platforms to Unify On-Premise and Cloud

Adds Scale-Out Management of Unstructured Data to Red Hat Portfolio with Gluster's Disruptive Open Source Storage Solutions

Red Hat, Inc. announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Gluster, Inc., a leading provider of scale-out, open source storage solutions for standardizing the management of unstructured data. With this acquisition, Red Hat will define a new baseline for how enterprise IT manages the explosion of big data, whether deployed on-premise or spanning into the public cloud. Red Hat is expanding into a critical part of enterprise infrastructure, enabling it to deliver open storage solutions that protect customer investments as they approach the new era of computing.

"The explosion of big data and the new paradigm of cloud computing are converging, forcing IT to re-think storage investments that are cost-effective, manageable and scale for the future,” said Brian Stevens, CTO and vice president, Worldwide Engineering at Red Hat. "Our customers are looking for software-based storage solutions that manage their file-based data on-premise, in the cloud and bridging between the two. With unstructured data growth (such as log files, virtual machines, email, audio, video and documents), the 90's paradigm of forcing everything into expensive, single-system DBMS residing on an internal corporate SAN has become unwieldy and impractical."

Founded in 2005, Gluster's goal was to simplify storage using open source software and commodity hardware. The heart of Gluster is GlusterFS, a software-only, scale-out storage system. It allows enterprises to combine large numbers of commodity storage and compute resources into a high-performance, centrally-managed and globally-accessible storage pool. By combining commodity economics with a scale-out approach, customers can deploy abundant storage without compromising on cost, performance and manageability. Gluster has emerged as an innovative open source leader, relied upon by companies such as Pandora, Box.net and Samsung to efficiently manage large volumes of data.

Red Hat has agreed to acquire Gluster, a privately-held company, for approximately $136 million in cash. As part of the transaction, Red Hat will also assume unvested Gluster equity outstanding on the closing date and issue certain equity retention incentives. The transaction is expected to close in October, subject to customary closing conditions.

The acquisition is expected to have no material impact to Red Hat’s revenue this fiscal year but should begin to grow next year based on a subscription revenue model. Red Hat is reaffirming its Q3 and fiscal 2012 guidance, provided on its September 21, 2011 earnings call, for revenue, non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP earnings per share and operating cash flow, assuming the exchange rates of September 20, 2011 identified on the call.

Non-GAAP operating margin and EPS estimates exclude the impact of stock-based compensation and amortization of acquisition-related intangibles. Stock-based compensation and amortization expenses are estimated to increase by $1 million and $2 million, respectively, per quarter. (Red Hat: ra)