Quantum Corporation is entering into an agreement with Western Digital Technologies to acquire its ActiveScale object storage business.
By acquiring the ActiveScale product line and talent, object storage software and erasure coding technology is now available in Quantum’s portfolio and enables the company to expand in the object storage market.
Quantum and Western Digital are committed to executing a smooth transition for customers and key stakeholders, with Quantum providing post-closing continued support for ActiveScale products and a strong commitment to invest in - and enhance - the ActiveScale product line.
The transaction is expected to close by March 31, 2020, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Quantum expects the initial financial impact of the transaction to be neutral to slightly accretive to current business operations and additional guidance will be provided with the release of the fiscal Q4 2020 financial results.
Object storage software has a number of attributes that make it particularly well-suited for a wide range of datasets:
- Massive Scalability
- Highly Durable and Available
- Easy to Manage at Scale
Quantum has a history of success delivering object storage and has been selling and supporting the ActiveScale product line for over five years.
Object storage can be used as an active-archive tier of storage – where StorNext file storage is used for highest performance ingest and processing of data, object storage acts as lower cost online content repository, and tape acts as the lowest cost cold storage tier, as shown in the diagram below.
With the addition of the ActiveScale product line, Quantum will remain committed to maintaining an open ecosystem of certified third-party object stores, with StorNext providing the ability to move data to third-party object tiers.
“Object storage software is an obvious fit with our strategy, our go-to-market focus, and within our technology portfolio,” said Jamie Lerner, president and CEO, Quantum. “We are committed to the product, and to making ActiveScale customers successful, and we look forward to engaging with them to solve their most pressing business challenges around storing and managing unstructured data. “
For more information about this news, visit www.quantum.com.