EMC to acquire Isilon

EMC (NYSE: EMC) today confirmed its planned acquisition of ‘scale-out NAS’ company Isilon Systems (Nasdaq: ISLN).EMC will pay $33.85 per share in cash in exchange for each share of Isilon for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $2.25bn. The boards of directors of both EMC and Seattle-based Isilon have unanimously approved the terms of the agreement. The transaction is expected to be completed late this year.IDC estimates scale-out NAS will grow on average approximately 36 percent annually, reaching an estimated $6bn dollars in 2014. EMC says its Atmos and Isilon’s solutions will offer customers a scalable, low-cost storage infrastructure for managing ‘Big Data’ – a term used to describe the massive amount of data produced by a new generation of applications in markets like those used in life sciences, media and entertainment, and oil and gas. ComplementaryIsilon’s scale-out NAS systems are designed to begin small and scale quickly up to 10 petabytes in size, with high levels of performance and availability. EMC says Atmos object storage provides a perfect complement to Isilon for massive globally distributed environments and object access to data for usages like Web 2.0 applications.
“EMC’s track record of successfully acquiring, integrating and growing leading companies and the complementary nature of our technologies are undeniable,” said Sujal Patel, CEO of Isilon said in a statement.
Adds Joe Tucci, chairman and CEO, EMC: “The unmistakable waves of cloud computing and ‘Big Data’ are upon us. Customers are looking for new ways to store, protect, secure and add intelligence to the vast amounts of information they will accumulate over the next decade. EMC, in combination with Isilon, sits at the intersection of these trends with leading products, solutions and services to help customers get the absolute most out of what cloud computing has to offer.”