EMC has added NAS virtualization to its product arsenal with the acquisition of Rainfinity.
EMC already offers SAN virtualization with its new Invista product, and the addition of Rainfinity gives the company a “comprehensive set of technologies” for networked storage virtualization, said Tom Joyce, EMC’s vice president of storage platforms marketing. It also gives EMC another weapon in its battle with Network Appliance for NAS supremacy.
“We’ve been looking for technology like this,” said Joyce.
The acquisition comes five months after EMC agreed to resell Rainfinity’s RainStorage platform. Joyce said EMC received “very positive feedback from customers” about Rainfinity’s products.
EMC valued the acquisition at less than $100 million. The purchase comes a day after EMC revealed that it had picked up the assets of intelligent storage switch maker Maranti, technology that analysts expect could wind up in EMC’s Invista platform.
Rainfinity’s Network File Virtualization technology moves in and out of band to provide full access to Windows, Linux and Unix-based files during system migrations, regardless of where the data resides and with no threat of data loss. The company’s virtualization and namespace technology results in an “easier presentation layer” for end users and better utilization of storage for heterogeneous, tiered storage and ILM environments, said Joyce.
Joyce said virtualization “is a very strategic area for us, and you’ll continue to see focus there.”
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