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Acquisitions

Vembu Acquires CloudNucleus To Boost Data Backup, Recovery Solutions

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Vembu Technologies, a provider of online data protection software for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Managed Hosting Providers (MHPs), has announced that it acquired CloudNucleus, a data protection software developer with specific focus on continuous data protection with bare metal backup and disaster recovery for Windows and Linux environments.

Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The addition of CloudNucleus strengthens Vembu’s offerings in the areas of business continuity and disaster recovery, Continuous Data Protection (CDP), Bare Metal Recovery (BMR), and protection of virtualized environments and will enhance the ability of Vembu’s service provider partners to offer a superior backup service to their customers.

Further, CloudNucleus’ technical capability, and service delivery will complement Vembu’s established channel and enhance its ability to serve partners and their customers around the globe.

Vembu intends to integrate the technology and operations of CloudNucleus into its existing operations.

Srivatsan Venkatesan will join Vembu as Vice President of Product Management, Storage Products. Vembu and CloudNucleus will integrate engineering and development functions to accelerate the development and delivery of their data protection solutions.

Hitachi Data Systems Acquires BlueArc In All-Cash Deal

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Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, has acquired BlueArc Corporation, a provider of scalable, high performance network storage solutions.

Building upon a successful 5 year OEM partnership, Hitachi Data Systems and BlueArc will give customers the combination of Hitachi quality, reliability and support with innovative, highly scalable, high performance BlueArc network attached storage (NAS).

Hitachi Data Systems completed the acquisition of all outstanding shares of BlueArc in an all-cash transaction.

Wells Fargo Securities was the exclusive financial advisor to Hitachi Data Systems.

BofA Merrill Lynch acted as financial advisor and Credit Suisse as a co-advisor to BlueArc for this transaction.

Dell To Acquires Datacenter Solutions Company Force10 Networks

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Dell this morning announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Force10 Networks, a provider of high-performance datacenter networking solutions.

Force10’s networking capabilities complement Dell’s datacenter solutions portfolio, enabling it to offer customers a broader range of enterprise offerings.

Force10 is a leader in datacenter, service provider, and enterprise networking. It is nearly a $200-million company, based on trailing 12 months revenue, with approximately 80 percent of its business in North America and operating in over 60 countries worldwide.

Force10’s Open Cloud Networking is based on open standards, automation and virtualization, and basically allows customers to transform their network infrastructures into an open, reliable and scalable datacenter and cloud computing fabric.

Much like past acquisitions of Compellent and EqualLogic, Dell says it is committed to maintaining and growing Force10’s channel program.

Force10’s customers include Web companies, Internet portals, carriers, research laboratories and government organizations.

Force10 was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in San Jose, California, with research and development operations based in Silicon Valley.

Dell says it plans to keep Force10’s existing operations in Chennai, India as it continues to invest in additional engineering and sales capability to grow this business.

The transaction was approved by the board of directors of each company. Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The transaction remains subject to customary conditions and is expected to close in late summer.

Citrix Reaches For The Cloud.com, Acquires Cloud Computing Startup For A Reported $200 Million+

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Citrix this morning announced that it has acquired Cloud.com, a provider of software infrastructure platforms for cloud providers. The company’s CloudStack product line helps providers of all types deploy and manage simple, cost-effective cloud services that are scalable, secure, and open by design.

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but TechCrunch reports that Citrix paid more than $200 million for the cloud computing startup.

Also read: Citrix Acquires Cloud.com: An Analysis from CloudAve

Industry analysts expect a massive build out in cloud infrastructure, creating a new market projected to exceed $11 billion by the end of 2013.

The Cloud.com product line is not a traditional enterprise server virtualization platform with cloud management layered on top. It is a hypervisor-agnostic solution designed from the ground up to help providers build clouds the way the world’s largest and most successful public clouds are built – simple, automated, elastic, scalable and efficient.

With the addition of Cloud.com, Citrix now offers a complete portfolio of virtualization, orchestration and networking solutions purpose built for what it dubs the ‘Cloud Era’. The Cloud.com product line will continue to support commercial hypervisors such as Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere, as well as open source hypervisors like Xen. Citrix intends to add support for Microsoft products like Hyper-V and System Center to the Cloud.com product line, as well as support a full range of “platform-as-a-service” development environments, storage systems, servers and management software.

As a founding member of Openstack.org, Citrix is the second largest contributor to the project and is a member of the OpenStack policy board. Citrix product support for OpenStack was initially announced at the recent Citrix Synergy conference under the code name “Project Olympus.”

With this acquisition, Citrix will also be extending OpenStack support to the Cloud.com product line in an upcoming release later this year.

Cloud.com CEO Sheng Liang will continue to lead the design, architecture and technology of the CloudStack product line, reporting to Sameer Dholakia, group VP and GM of the newly-formed Cloud Platforms product group at Citrix.

The Cloud.com CloudStack solution is available to cloud providers today, with Citrix branded versions coming in a future release.

CA Technologies Buys ITKO For $330 Million In Cash

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CA Technologies today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Interactive TKO (ITKO), a provider of service simulation solutions for developing applications in composite and cloud environments, for $330 million in an all-cash transaction.

CA Technologies says the acquisition of ITKO will add a new dimension to modern IT management and extend it to encompass the entire service delivery lifecycle.

In particular, the acquisition should help its customers overcome the limitations of current organizational approaches, breaking down the silos across development, testing and operations.

For the trailing 12-month period ending March 31, 2011, ITKO reported revenue of approximately $39 million, more than doubling the prior 12-month period. For this same period, ITKO was profitable and generated positive cash flow.

The acquisition is expected to be completed within three months, pending regulatory approval.

At the close of the transaction, Shridhar Mittal, president and CEO of ITKO, will join CA Technologies as general manager of ITKO, a division of CA Technologies.

It is anticipated that all of ITKO’s approximately 120 employees will join CA Technologies.