Microsoft Acquires StorSimple to Bolster Azure Storage

Microsoft's deal to acquire StorSimple Tuesday for an undisclosed amount fills a key hole in Redmond's effort to offer enterprises its so-called Cloud OS.

StorSimple is a three-year old provider of cloud integrated storage (CIS) appliances that allow those who manage datacenters to add public cloud services to the storage tier of an enterprise network. By using cloud services for data storage, StorSimple argues companies can offer improved disaster recovery, while lowering total cost of storage ownership by 60 to 80 percent.

The CIS storage appliances extend SAN snapshots, primary storage, backup and archive data to cloud-based services from Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Nivanix and EMC's Atmos storage running in AT&T's public cloud as well as OpenStack services from Dell, HP, and IBM and of course Microsoft's Windows Azure.

"A lot of mainstream enterprise IT customers are choosing Windows Azure with StorSimple," said co-founder and CEO Ursheet Parikh in a short pre-recorded video discussion embedded in a blog post by Michael Park, corporate VP for Microsoft's server and tools business.

Does that mean once StorSimple becomes part of Microsoft that it will only use Windows Azure as a cloud target? A Microsoft spokeswoman would only say: "As a result of this announcement nothing changes. We have no additional information to share at this time."

StorSimple says its redundant disk controller ensures high availability and no single point of failure, while enabling non-disruptive software upgrades. The appliances include an application optimization plug-in architecture that provides plug-ins for individual files, virtual machine libraries and client devices as well as SharePoint and Exchange. It's also certified for Windows Server and VMware infrastructures.

Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 10/18/2012 at 4:59 PM