IBM to Acquire Israel-Based Storage Firm XIV

Supercomputer specialist IBM announced that it acquired the Tel-Aviv storage company XIV for an undisclosed price. The privately-held storage technology company has about 40 employees and is the latest achievement in IBM's purchasing spree that started recently in order to consolidate its expansion on the storage market.

The company, as well as its technological assets and employees, will become the property of the IBM System Storage business unit of the IBM Systems and Technology Group. Although both companies refused to comment on the purchase price, former reports estimate its value at around $350 million.

"The acquisition of XIV will further strengthen the IBM infrastructure portfolio long term and put IBM in the best position to address emerging storage opportunities like Web 2.0 applications, digital archives and digital media," said Andy Monshaw, general manager, IBM System Storage. "The ability for almost anyone to create digital content at any time has accelerated the need for a whole new way of applying infrastructure solutions to the new world of digital information."

XIV is a smaller acquisition than some other deals the computer giant has closed recently, but it is an important step in IBM's evolution in the storage business and shows the company's willingness to "stretch outside of the boundaries of IBM to see how we can collaborate with others to bring in new ideas and technologies."

Moreover, XIV is the owner of the NEXTRA architecture and its noticeably features: the ability to scale dynamically, heal itself should failure occur, and self-tune for significant performance boosts. The new architecture eliminates the hassle of managing accelerated growth environments and simplifies their expansion.

"We are pleased to become a significant part of the IBM family, allowing for our storage architecture, our engineers and our storage industry experience to be part of IBM's overall storage business," said Moshe Yanai, XIV chairman. "Combining our architectural advancements with IBM's world-wide research, sales, service, manufacturing, and distribution capabilities will provide us with the ability to have these technologies tackle the emerging Web 2.0 technology needs and reach every corner of the world."

IBM spokespersons said that improving the company's storage portfolio is a key strategy for the firm over the next few years, but refused to disclose how the company will integrate its new purchases with the existing storage business.

"What we're doing is we're putting a stamp on it to say, look, we've acquired XIV, we're going after these markets, watch this space," said the spokesman.