HGST (WD) Definitively Acquires Amplidata

Why HDD maker entering into software-defined object storage?

This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on March 4, 2015 at 3:02 pm

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Western Digital Corporation announced that HGST, Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Amplidata NV, a privately-held developer of object storage software for public and private cloud data centers.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

HGST is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital Corp. The acquisition supports the company’s strategy to expand into higher value storage platforms and systems that deliver value and scalability to address the growth in storage requirements in cloud data centers.

Amplidata’s primary offering is Himalaya, an object storage software product that enables scale-out software-defined storage systems. By delivering scalability with the efficiency, resiliency, and flexibility required for demanding cloud data center environments, its products and technology have earned OEMs and cloud service providers.

HGST had previously selected Amplidata as a joint development partner for its Active Archive platform which aims to enable storage efficiency at low TCO. Having greater control and expertise over the fundamental building blocks of HDDs, SSDs, and software, enables tighter end-to-end system integration and a more optimal use of software and underlying device capabilities.

“We have had an ongoing strategic relationship with Amplidata that included investment from Western Digital Capital and subsequent joint development activity,” said Steve Milligan, president and CEO, Western Digital. “Amplidata has deep technical expertise, an innovative spirit, and valuable intellectual property in this fast-growing market space. The acquisition will support our strategic growth initiatives and broaden the scope of opportunity for HGST in cloud data center storage infrastructure.”

Active Archive: Innovating in the Third Platform
The storage ecosystem continues to transform with a greater focus on how data is stored, accessed, and protected. As a result, storage has become a key enabler of the information technology industry’s transition to the Third Platform of computing, as the world becomes more data-centric. Dynamic provisioning of cloud-scale computing assets is the essence of the Third Platform, which is driving new customer requirements and transforming business models. HGST’s Active Archive solutions are purpose-built to address the need for rapid access to the massive data stores in computing’s Third Platform.

“As the evolution of architectures and business models continues to take shape in the storage industry, HGST is uniquely positioned to drive innovation and lead a transformation of the data center in the Third Platform,” said Mike Cordano, president, HGST. “For applications requiring massive, peta-scale capacities, software is essential to providing scalability, resiliency and efficiency. Amplidata is a leader in software defined storage technology for these scale-out systems and together we will accelerate development of the Active Archive platform to meet the demands of our data-centric world.”

Amplidata’s AmpliStor XT technology was chosen by Quantum for integration into its StorNext family of data management and tiered storage solutions.

“Amplidata’s technology is a key building block in Lattus, our StorNext-managed private cloud archive, providing unparalleled performance for high-speed data access in a massively scalable and highly cost-effective solution,” said Jon Gacek, president and CEO, Quantum Corp. “As both an Amplidata strategic partner and investor, we’re excited about the acquisition. It reinforces the value of our solution, and we believe it will result in new strategic partnership opportunities.“

With a broad enterprise storage solutions portfolio, HGST is helping customers and partners build tomorrow’s IT infrastructures today. From tier 0 workloads to long-term storage and active archive, HGST’s data center storage solutions help manage the enormous volume, velocity and variety of data, giving customers better efficiency and reliability for managing data through its lifecycle.

HGST is developing products that address the rapidly evolving needs of cloud service providers and enterprises through the tight integration of advanced software and hardware. Tts innovations create more adaptive and efficient IT infrastructures that help organizations better manage data across its lifecycle to extract greater value from the information it holds.

The Amplidata acquisition is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2015

Comments

Why HGST acquired Amplidata and entering into software?

For us two reasons:

WD's subsidiary HGST want to expand its core business, the manufacturing of HDDs, an activity going to stagnate this year and the next ones, and not only on SSDs and all-flash arrays with the acquisition of Skyera, but in more lucrative storage infrastructure. And here it's a good occasion to build one with its own Ethernet drives or HDD/SSD "bricks" integrated with Amplidata's software-defined object storage for low cost high-capacity scale-out storage solutions. According to IDC, the TAM for scale-out object-based software and storage appliances will be $15.4 billion this year and will grow to $21.7 billion by 2017.
WD/HGST said the acquisition, paid with cash on hand, was the result of a competitive process. We bet that Amplidata, probably not profitable, was cheaper to obtain than competitors Caringo, Cleversafe, Scality or few others start-ups more greedy. Furthermore, WD was already an investor in Amplidata (see below.)

Who is Amplidata?
Born 2008, in Amplidata is privately funded company with original HQs in Lochristi, Belgium and US HQs opened in 2010 in Milpitas, CA, with some R&D in Egypt. It has 50 employees primarily located in Belgium.

Following the acquisition, Amplidata will be a part of HGST's Elastic Storage Platforms Group, which is headed by Dave Tang, SVP and GM of this group.

The Amplidata's trio of founders Kristof De Spiegeleer, Wim De Wispelaere and Wouter Van Eetvelde was previously with DataCenter Technologies in de-dupe (acquired by Symantec in 2005 for $58 million) and Dedigate (acquired by Terremark in 2005 for $7 million)). De Spiegeleer also added Q-layer (acquired by Sun in 2009) to his track record. And you find Big Bang Ventures, the new investor in the start-up, involved in the same companies: DataCenter Technologies, Dedigate, Q-layer, and also Racktivity (an Amplidata partner for low-power racks). The team of storage veterans developed patented BitSpread technology. Amplidata was in fact the new name and commercial version of the B-Virtual cloud storage solution, the difference being that Amplidata is delivering the storage system now on pre-installed storage appliances.

Current CEO Mike Wall was named in September 2012He has been Amplidata's chairman since April 2012. He was formerly president and CEO of Atempo and a founding member of the management team that developed Intel's storage business.

Financial funding

Amplidata got a total of $43 million in financial funding following:

two rounds in 2010, $2.5 million secured by Big Bang Ventures and then $6 million with investors Big Bang Ventures, Endeavour Vision and Swisscom Ventures,
$8 million in 2012,
$11 million in serie E round led by Intel Capital and smaller part by Quantum once more participating, and finally
$10 million investment of Western Digital Capital in September 2014.

Shareholders include Western Digital Capital, Intel Capital, Quantum, Endeavour Vision, Hummingbird Ventures, and Swisscom Ventures.

Ecosystem
Known customers include École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Massive Media, McCloud, Sakura Internet and Verizon. Partners are Avere, Cirrascale, Commvault, eld, Intel, Newisys, QStar, Quanta, Rorke, Sanmina, Supermicro, Twinstrata and Symantec. Quantum OEMs Amplidata software in its Lattus storage offering. Note that Seagate is also referenced as a partner on Amplidata's web site.

Previously, HGST had also chosen Amplidata as a joint development partner for its Active Archive platform released in November 2014 but initial revenue are only expected in the first half of 2015.

Core Technology
It's an innovative technology that replaces traditional RAIDs, without hardware controllers. It distributes and stores data redundantly across a large number of disks with a special algorithm, storing data as objects. The company said it delivers durability greater than 15 nines and can tolerate up to 19 simultaneous hardware failures (two for RAID-6) with no data loss. You can determine your level of reliability by choosing the number of times you duplicate the same block on several distributed disks on the network. Unlimited scalability is possible by adding storage nodes for several petabytes.