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EMC acquires NAS specialist Isilon for $2.25bn

The information storage specialist has agreed to purchase Isilon for $2.25bn, in order to acquire its range of modular NAS storage products
Written by Ben Woods, Contributor

The infrastructure storage systems and software company EMC has announced that it will purchase network-attached storage firm Isilon.

The purchase will provide EMC with Isilon's range of 'scale-out' network-attached storage (NAS) products, designed to allow incremental storage additions up to a total of 10 petabytes. It will also fulfil the company's aspirations of providing storage infrastructure products capable of handling the 'big data' of public and private cloud environments. EMC will pay $33.85 (£20.60) per Isilon share.

"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," said Joe Tucci, EMC chairman and chief executive, in a statement. EMC said that it does not expect the purchase to affect its 2010 earnings.

Directors of both companies have agreed to the acquisition, which is worth a total of $2.25bn and is expected to close late in 2010. At the time of writing, EMC's stock price had dropped 0.6 percent since markets opened and Isilon's price had increased 28.6 percent.

When questioned over potential staffing changes or restructuring within the company, ZDNet UK was told by an EMC spokesman that the "acquisition is about growth and expansion [and] EMC intends to invest in the business to meet [its] growth plans, basically tripling the size of the combined Isilon businesses in the next two years".

On 20 October EMC reported earnings of $649.4m for the third quarter of 2010 as a result of an increased demand for virtualisation and storage products.

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