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HGST goes on Himalaya expedition with Amplidata purchase

Object storage is no object

HGST is buying its way into object storage by acquiring Amplidata, a start-up whose technology is OEM’d by Quantum as its Lattus product and included in StorNext.

HGST is developing an active disk-based archiving array, powered by Amplidata Himalaya software and using HGST shingled magnetic media drives. Initial revenue shipments for the Active Archive platform are expected in the first half of 2015.

Related to this engineering development, HGST had become a strategic investor in Amplidata through parent Western Digital.

That obviously isn’t a close enough relationship and HGST is now buying the entire company, as it wants to strengthen its strategy to expand into higher-value data storage platforms and systems that “deliver breakthrough value and scalability to address the massive growth in storage requirements in cloud data centres,” it says,

HGST stated: “Having greater control and expertise over the fundamental building blocks of hard drives, solid state drives, and software, enables tighter end-to-end system integration and a more optimal use of software and underlying device capabilities.”

It added: "We are vertically innovating across the entire stack to create solutions with significantly higher value than standalone devices."

CEO Steve Milligan had a canned quote ready: “The acquisition will support our strategic growth initiatives and broaden the scope of opportunity for HGST in cloud data centre storage infrastructure."

HGST President Mike Cordano added a little flesh to this bone: “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."

Himalaya is what object storage fans are now used to – your average massively scalable, highly secure object storage scheme with its main components diagrammed here:

Himalaya_scheme
Next page: Joins abound

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