Edited excerpts from the Press Release:
NYSE-listed Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, has agreed to acquire privately held Gluster, Inc, a leading provider of scale-out, open source storage solutions for standardizing the management of unstructured data, for approximately $136 million in cash. As part of the transaction, Red Hat will also assume unvested Gluster equity outstanding on the closing date and issue certain equity retention incentives. The transaction is expected to close in October, subject to customary closing conditions.
With this acquisition, Red Hat will define a new baseline for how enterprise IT manages the explosion of big data, whether deployed on-premise or spanning into the public cloud. Red Hat is expanding into a critical part of enterprise infrastructure, enabling it to deliver open storage solutions that protect customer investments as they approach the new era of computing.
Founded in 2005, Gluster's goal was to simplify storage using open source software and commodity hardware. The heart of Gluster is GlusterFS, a software-only, scale-out storage system. It allows enterprises to combine large numbers of commodity storage and compute resources into a high-performance, centrally-managed and globally-accessible storage pool. By combining commodity economics with a scale-out approach, customers can deploy abundant storage without compromising on cost, performance and manageability. Gluster has emerged as an innovative open source leader, relied upon by companies such as Pandora, Box.net and Samsung to efficiently manage large volumes of data.
"We are extremely pleased to be joining Red Hat," said AB Periasamy, co-founder and CTO of Gluster. "We believe this is a perfect combination of technologies, strategies and cultures and is a great development for our customers, employees, investors and community. Gluster started off with a goal to be the Red Hat of storage. Now, we are the storage of Red Hat.”
The acquisition is expected to have no material impact to Red Hat’s revenue this fiscal year but should begin to grow next year based on a subscription revenue model.
From the Venture Intelligence PE Deal database: Gluster raised $8.5 million in its second round of funding from Nexus Ventures in November 2010. It had raised its first round funding from the same VC firm in 2008.
About Nexus Venture Partners
Nexus Venture Partners (www.nexusvp.com) is India's leading venture capital fund, with offices in India and Silicon Valley. It has $320m under management and an active portfolio of over 30 companies across technology, internet, media, consumer, business services and rural sectors. The Nexus team plays an active role in helping entrepreneurs and management teams build market leading businesses. Some of the companies that Nexus has invested in include Cloud.com (acquired by Citrix), Gluster (Open source storage), Pubmatic (Publisher Ad revenue optimization), DimDim (Open Source Web Conferencing acquired by Salesforce.com), snapdeal.com (ecommerce), Mapmyindia (Digital Navigation), Netmagic (Managed Services and Cloud), Komli (Online ad network), Deccan Pharma (Neutraceuticals), Prana (Animation services), Suminter (Organic farming) and Yebhi (E-commerce). Investors in Nexus include leading university endowments, foundations and sovereign funds.
About Gluster
Gluster is a leading provider of open source storage solutions for public, private and hybrid clouds. Over 150 enterprises worldwide have used Gluster in commercial deployments ranging from a few terabytes to multiple petabytes, across the most demanding applications in digital media delivery, healthcare, internet, energy and biotech. Gluster is privately-held and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Visit us at www.gluster.com.
NYSE-listed Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, has agreed to acquire privately held Gluster, Inc, a leading provider of scale-out, open source storage solutions for standardizing the management of unstructured data, for approximately $136 million in cash. As part of the transaction, Red Hat will also assume unvested Gluster equity outstanding on the closing date and issue certain equity retention incentives. The transaction is expected to close in October, subject to customary closing conditions.
With this acquisition, Red Hat will define a new baseline for how enterprise IT manages the explosion of big data, whether deployed on-premise or spanning into the public cloud. Red Hat is expanding into a critical part of enterprise infrastructure, enabling it to deliver open storage solutions that protect customer investments as they approach the new era of computing.
Founded in 2005, Gluster's goal was to simplify storage using open source software and commodity hardware. The heart of Gluster is GlusterFS, a software-only, scale-out storage system. It allows enterprises to combine large numbers of commodity storage and compute resources into a high-performance, centrally-managed and globally-accessible storage pool. By combining commodity economics with a scale-out approach, customers can deploy abundant storage without compromising on cost, performance and manageability. Gluster has emerged as an innovative open source leader, relied upon by companies such as Pandora, Box.net and Samsung to efficiently manage large volumes of data.
"We are extremely pleased to be joining Red Hat," said AB Periasamy, co-founder and CTO of Gluster. "We believe this is a perfect combination of technologies, strategies and cultures and is a great development for our customers, employees, investors and community. Gluster started off with a goal to be the Red Hat of storage. Now, we are the storage of Red Hat.”
The acquisition is expected to have no material impact to Red Hat’s revenue this fiscal year but should begin to grow next year based on a subscription revenue model.
From the Venture Intelligence PE Deal database: Gluster raised $8.5 million in its second round of funding from Nexus Ventures in November 2010. It had raised its first round funding from the same VC firm in 2008.
About Nexus Venture Partners
Nexus Venture Partners (www.nexusvp.com) is India's leading venture capital fund, with offices in India and Silicon Valley. It has $320m under management and an active portfolio of over 30 companies across technology, internet, media, consumer, business services and rural sectors. The Nexus team plays an active role in helping entrepreneurs and management teams build market leading businesses. Some of the companies that Nexus has invested in include Cloud.com (acquired by Citrix), Gluster (Open source storage), Pubmatic (Publisher Ad revenue optimization), DimDim (Open Source Web Conferencing acquired by Salesforce.com), snapdeal.com (ecommerce), Mapmyindia (Digital Navigation), Netmagic (Managed Services and Cloud), Komli (Online ad network), Deccan Pharma (Neutraceuticals), Prana (Animation services), Suminter (Organic farming) and Yebhi (E-commerce). Investors in Nexus include leading university endowments, foundations and sovereign funds.
About Gluster
Gluster is a leading provider of open source storage solutions for public, private and hybrid clouds. Over 150 enterprises worldwide have used Gluster in commercial deployments ranging from a few terabytes to multiple petabytes, across the most demanding applications in digital media delivery, healthcare, internet, energy and biotech. Gluster is privately-held and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Visit us at www.gluster.com.