Consolidation hots up in the storage market

Network Appliance snaps up Decru in a bid for dominance in the storage security marketplace

Decru will retain its existing channel structure and remain as a separate company – for the time being – following its $272m acquisition by Network Appliance (NetApps) last week.

Tim Pitcher, vice president of strategy and business development at NetApps, told CRN that its existing channel partners would benefit from an extended portfolio. “We will sell Decru’s technology through our channel, otherwise we would be limiting things. Their channel will also be run separately from ours for the time being,” he said.

The acquisition is further evidence of consolidation within the storage marketplace. Earlier this month, Sun acquired StorageTek for $4.1bn and SunGard Data Systems was acquired in April for $11.3bn.

Kevin Brown, vice president of marketing at Decru, said: “The deal accelerates our mission to make storage security mainstream. We’ll have 1,300 NetApps sales people introducing the product worldwide, and the credibility of a world-class company with $1bn in the bank.”

Brown said the deal will allow Decru to remain an independent division within NetApps. “We plan to operate our business unit independently, so we can continue to work closely with our current storage partners, even if they compete with NetApps. NetApps will fully support Decru as we continue to establish and deepen our relationships with other storage vendors and the channel,” he said.

He added that once the acquisition closes the firm will “continue to evaluate” its channel programme based on productivity and fit.

Graham Titterington, an analyst at Ovum, said: “NetApps and Decru have been collaborating on several projects over the last year and so the specific choice of partners is not surprising.”

Earlier this month both vendors released a credit card storage and encryption device called CardVault (CRN, 20 June), which incorporates Decru’s DataFort security into NetApps hardware products.