Where are they now? Recent changes in the storage space

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watnThe storage space has been a very exciting space over recent years. There have been so many new start-ups and new innovations, that it becomes difficult to keep track sometimes. More recently, there has been a lot of news around mergers, acquisitions, shutdowns and IPOs in the storage industry. It got me thinking about a lot of the changes we have seen over the past number of years in the storage market. Just for my own interest, I went back over many of my blogs, and the various conversations I had with people at various VMworld events and VMUG meetings, and tried to see where a lot of these companies/products are now, and what they are currently doing. Now, I am not going to mention every single vendor here. I’m simply trying to highlight the ones that were acquired or merged or indeed IPO’ed (and in some cases are no longer with us) during this period.

Amplidata – acquired by HGST/Western Digital (March 2015)

Atlantis Computing – no longer exists, certain assets acquired by Hive-IO (July 2017)

Avere Systems – acquired by Microsoft (Jan 2018)

Brocade – acquired by Broadcom (November 2016)

Coho Data – no longer exists, closed down (August 2017)

Coraid – no longer exists, closed down (April 2015). (Resurrected once more by SouthSuite)

CleverSafe – acquired by IBM (November 2015)

Data Gravity – acquired by HyTrust (July 2017)

Datrium – intent to acquire by VMware (July 2020)

EMC – merger with DELL to form DELL Technologies (September 2016)

Dot Hill – acquired by Seagate (October 2015)

DSSD – acquired by EMC (May 2014) EOL’ed by DELL (March 2017)

Emulex – acquired by Avago (February 2015)

Exablox – acquired by StorageCraft (January 2017)

Flashsoft – acquired by SanDisk ( February 2012) Spun out as JetStream Software (mid 2018)

Fusion-io – acquired by SanDisk (June 2014)

Greenbytes – acquired by Oracle (May 2014)

Hedvig – acquired by CommVault (Sep 2019)

HP – split in two,  storage now in HP Enterprise (HPE) – October 2015

Inktank (Ceph) – acquired by RedHat (April 2014)

Maxta – no longer exists, closed down (Jan 2019)

Mellanox – acquired by NVIDIA (March 2019)

NexGen Storage – acquired by Fusion-io, then SanDisk, then spun out again.  Since acquired by Pivot3 (January 2015)

Nexsan – acquired by Imation (January 2013) – spun out again (January 2017)

Nimble Storage – IPO (December 2013) – acquired by HPE (March 2017)

Nimbus Data – dormant since 2015. No idea if they still exist or not.

Nutanix – IPO (September 2016)

PernixData – acquired by Nutanix and EOL’ed soon after (September 2016)

Pivot3 – acquired by Quantum (July 2021)

Portworx – acquired by Pure Storage (September 2020)

PrimaryData – rumored to have closed down (January 2018)

ProximalData – acquired by Samsung (November 2014)

Pure Storage – IPO (October 2015)

QLogic – acquired by Cavium (June 2016)

RedHat – acquired by IBM (July 2019)

SanDisk – acquired by Western Digital (October 2015)

ScaleIO – acquired by EMC (July 2013)

SimpliVity – acquired by HPE (January 2017)

Skyera – acquired by HGST/Western Digital (December 2014)

SolidFire – acquired by NetApp, announced in December 2015

Springpath – acquired by Cisco (August 2017) Rebranded as Cisco HypeFlex

Tegile – acquired by Western Digital (August 2017)

Texas Memory Systems (TMS) – acquired by IBM (October 2012)

Tintri – IPO (June 2017) Filed for Chapter 11 / Bankruptcy – acquired by DNN (July 2018)

TwinStrata – acquired by EMC (July 2014)

Violin Memory – IPO (September 2013) – Filed for Chapter 11 (December 2016) Resurfaced under new leadership as Violin Systems.

Virsto – acquired by VMware (February 2013)

VMware Virtual Storage Appliance – end of life announcement (April 2014)

Virident – acquired by HGST/Western Digital (September 2013)

Whiptail – acquired by Cisco Renamed Invicta (October 2013). Invicta end of life announcement (July 2015)

X-IO – Storage business (ISE) acquired by Violin Systems (October 2018) Remaining business rebranded as Axellio Inc

Xangati – acquired by Virtual Instruments (October 2016)

Xsigo – acquired by Oracle (July 2012)

XtremIO – acquired by EMC (May 2012)

Those are the ones I could think of but I’m sure I have missed some. Please leave a comment if I did.

I’m also pretty sure that we are going to see a lot more changes in this space. Interesting times.

Published by Cormac

18 Replies to “Where are they now? Recent changes in the storage space”

  1. That’s a good start on a complete list. I’d add:
    Qumulo – out of stealth 2/2015
    and
    Whiptail – became Invicta under Cisco, no longer exists

    1. Got the whiptail one Dave. Have Qumulo been acquired already? I’m really only highlighting mergers/acquisitions/IPOs or closures.

      1. You had Whiptail’s acquisition, but not it’s closure.

        Qumulo has neither IPO’ed or been acquired.

        If you want to include object storage, too, there’s also:
        Amplidata – acquired by HGST
        Cleversafe – acquired by IBM

        1. Ah – got it. Thanks Dave.

          Really this is only about companies that have had some sort of change to their status since exiting stealth – either bought out, IPO’ing or going under. Thanks for the others.

  5. Thank you for not naming the company in “stealth”. Let them die a slow painful death. They don’t need or deserve any publicity. Look them up on Glassdoor and LinkedIn – that will tell you everything you need to know.

    1. Don’t think much has changed in those spaces Jomak. As mentioned, I’m just looking at companies who have IPO’ed, merged, being acquired or folded. These companies are still getting VC investments afaik.

  7. Panasas sold their IP, laid off lots of folks few days ago and well on its way to being folded. What a waste.

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