Just days after Google announced that it would acquire Velostrata to help customers migrating more of their operations into cloud environments, HPE under its new CEO Antonio Neri is also upping its game in the same department. Today the company announced that it would acquire Plexxi, a specialist in software-defined data center solutions, aimed at optimising application performance for enterprises that are using hybrid cloud environments.
A spokesperson confirmed that the companies are not currently revealing the terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2018 (ending July 31).
For some book-ended context, Plexxi, founded in 2010, was last valued at around $267 million as of its last financing round, more than two years ago in January 2016, according to PitchBook. And the previous cloud infrastructure acquisition HPE made, of SimpliVity over a year ago, was for $650 million. Plexxi’s investors included GV (formerly Google Ventures), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix and more.
Ric Lewis, the VP & GM of HPE’s software-defined and cloud group, said that the plan will be to integrate Plexxi into HPE’s existing products in two areas. The first of these is in the company’s hyperconverged solutions business, where HPE’s acquisition of SimpliVity also sites. “Plexxi will enable us to deliver the industry’s only hyperconverged offering that incorporates compute, storage and data fabric networking into a single solution, with a single management interface and support,” he wrote in a blog post.
The second of these will be to bring Plexxi’s HCN tech to HPE Synergy and its composable infrastructure business. This, Lewis explained, is “a new category of infrastructure that delivers fluid pools of storage and compute resources that can be composed and recomposed as business needs dictate.” Plexxi will enable this approach to extend also to rack-based solutions in private clouds.
It’s not clear what roles Plexxi execs, which include CEO Rich Napolitano — who had been the president of EMC before joining the startup — will have at HPE. We’re asking and will update as we learn more.
“Plexxi and HPE’s values and vision for the future are closely aligned,” Napolitano wrote in his own announcement. “We share the same mission, to help the enterprise effectively leverage modern IT to accelerate their business in the digital age.”
While the two wait for the deal to close, it seems to be business as usual for Plexxi. Just earlier today, the company announced an expansion of its integrations with VMware.
